L'ADEGUATEZZA DELLA RETRIBUZIONE NEL CROCEVIA TRA TUTELE, AUTONOMIA SINDACALE E REGOLAZIONE DEL MERCATO

This thesis studies the adequacy of remuneration through the main jurisprudential, legislative and contractual junctures that have enveloped it. After framing the problem of poverty despite work in the national and European scenario, the study takes its starting point from the analysis of Article 36 of the Constitution. and from the jurisprudence which, in the aftermath of the Constitution's entry into force, contributed, on the one hand, to giving it a ‘unique normative vitality’ and to consecrating the role of trade union organisations as the privileged wage authority in our system; on the other hand, however, it consolidated a ‘reductionist’ interpretation of Article 36 of the Constitution, which today, following the phenomenon of the proliferation of collective agreements, is much criticised. The study then focuses on the regulatory interventions on remuneration that followed one after the other in Italy for three lustra starting in the 1970s and that led to the progressive dismantling of the automatic wage indexation system, until its definitive abandonment by the social partners in 1992. This phase was characterised by a strong tension that arose between heteronomy and collective autonomy in the regulation of workers' pay (also with regard to public workers, which, however, are not the subject of this paper). The impetus for these interventions stemmed from the realisation that pay is not an independent variable of the economic system, but a real constituent element of it. To replace the escalator, interconfederal agreements of 1993 and 2009 introduced a number of mechanisms to protect the purchasing power of wages, which, however, partly due to external circumstances, did not have the expected effects (the case of the collective agreement for fiduciary services is an emblematic example, on which we will dwell at length). A change of pace seems to be represented by Directive (EU) 2022/2041 on adequate minimum wages in the Union. While sharing the - uncontroversial - assumption that wages are a variable dependent on the economic environment, the European Union adopts a conception of these as an element capable of regulating the market with a view to upward convergence. On the basis of this consideration, the paper finally proposes to illustrate, in light of the legal nature of the directive, which is the best way to transpose it.