Improving pay and working conditions for care workers in Italy: social partners and public institutions in local experimentations

Problematic pay and poor working conditions are among the main causes of labour shortages in the European care sector. Literature links this issue to efforts to expand service coverage while respecting public budget constraints, goals pursued through marketization, often to the detriment of care workers. The paper analyses four local cases in Italy where social partners and public institutions have sought solutions to balance these competing goals while safeguarding workers’ conditions. In the first two cases, they acted on the provider’s nature to change the applicable labour collective agreement; in the other two, they modified the contractual relationship between public administrations and providers to improve wages and job grading. Based on documentary analysis and interviews at local and national levels, the article shows that a key factor in the relative success of these experimentations was the possibility, for social partners, to gain access to decision-making arenas beyond those of traditional employment relations.