202. Italy and Back Part 3: Health and Employment

In those days you had to be extremely careful not to get ill, or at any rate if you had to get ill, you had to try to get seriously ill, enough to have to go into hospital because that was the only free treatment anyone was entitled to- doctors and medicines were extremely expensive.  If you were out of a job, and having no social benefit like in Britain, your best bet was to lean against an oak tree, lay down your head and die.

Talking about jobs, where on earth would you get one?  Applications for jobs?  That was one of the biggest jokes that ran around the country at the time.   If it was a public or state job as in my case, teaching or nursing, Concorsi would be held and there would be a ratio of five thousand applicants to one post or something of that nature and what made the impossibility of getting a job even more impossible was that you had to have connections... we all know what connections are- some Minister or other in the government- what hope was there for poor suckers like Tom, Dick, Harry and Me?

It seemed the root of the problem lay in the fact that there was a law that no employer be it in the private or public sector, could fire an employee... the employee could be drunk, drugged, sitting on his backside all day doing nothing, and no one could sack him or her!  That was thanks to a left-wing amendment which when the Democrazia Cristiana, the party that had the relative majority from the birth of the Republic in 1948, was short of votes had to compromise with in order to stay in power ad infinitum.  And to think when voting time came along which on average was every other year, you had the choice of well over thirty parties... a fool’s paradise, I can assure. 

But apart from the fact that the state and private firms could not sack anyone, employers were also wary at employing anyone since not only did employers have to pay them wages but they also had to pay the government insurance and pension benefits which came close to the same amount as that of the wages.  With the cost of one employee, everyone else in Britain or the US could employ two... and funnily enough, in spite of the efforts of the Berlusconi government, that still applies today in 2010.  Even though some reforms have been made and it is possible to employ temporary workers instead, or whose contracts are renewable, nevertheless the costs the employer has to pay out is still the same amount as that of the wages. 

In 1976 the only hope to get a job was with a huge firm like Fiat who when it needed money, the government paid up instead, that is, us the taxpayer. Government subsidies are still applied today... The National Alitalia Air Company is only one example, though that has now been settled more on a private than on a national basis.

Continue...

Related Posts: 

Italy and Back: Part 1

Part 2:  Loos and Paper Coins

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