Renzi battles internal dissent over Article 18

(ANSA) - Rome, September 22 - While Premier Matteo Renzi met with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs before traveling to New York for a UN conference on climate change, internal dissenters rattled sabers on the home front as they gathered Monday to write amendments to an enabling law to the premier's signature Jobs Act.
    The Jobs Act, which has been approved at the committee stage, progressively raises safeguards for new hires, slashes the plethora of temp contracts currently plaguing entry workers, and establishes a minimum wage and universal unemployment benefit.
    But it also contains a key measure that would scale back a landmark jobs protection regulation - Article 18 of the 1970 Workers Stature guaranteeing people unjustly sacked the right to their job back - for new hires.
    The government says this clause discourages firms from offering workers regular, steady contracts as it makes it very hard from them to get rid of a staff member once on the books. But dissenters trying to protect Article 18 believe they are fighting for the very soul of the PD, ANSA sources said.
    While the premier warned dissenters that "they have got the wrong end of the stick" and Reform Minister Maria Elena Boschi called for party unity, former PD leader and one-time premier-designate Pier Luigi Bersani mooted the idea of "voting one's conscience" in parliament.
    "I can't be accused of conservatism, though I will accept the term old school," Bersani, who turns 63 at the end of the month, told public broadcaster RAI channel 1 evening news on Sunday.
    "I see (former center-right premier Silvio Berlusconi) being treated with respect, I hope the same will happen to me sooner or later," the former party chief added in a dig at Renzi, whose agreement with Berlusconi has spawned an electoral reform bill.
    "Dissenters must not use the labor issue as a battering ram to change internal party relations," PD co-Deputy Secretary Lorenzo Guerini replied on the pages of La Stampa newspaper.
    "The point is, do we all agree on the need for profound change in the labor market? Do we all agree that there are entire work categories that are being excluded from the safety net? If we do agree, then we will be able to find a useful consensus," Guerini told the Turin-based paper.
    "The most ardent criticisms come from those who in the past argued for change by overcoming Article 18. I have a feeling someone is using the labor issue to settle old scores within the party," PD co-Deputy Secretary Debora Serracchiani told La Repubblica newspaper, citing former premiers Massimo D'Alema and Bersani. "We will never accept the perverse logic of compensating those who are down by taking rights away from those who are up," CISL union federation leader Raffaele Bonanni said Monday.
    "The way to defeat job insecurity is to raise those who are down to the level of those who are up. If combating job insecurity is the intent, we are willing to negotiate everything, including Article 18".