Il paradosso dell’anzianità

Abstract

Sociologists have recently studied origins and maintenance of the so-called unpopular norms. These norms are not supported by a majority of persons, but notwithstanding are institutionalized and even endorsed by people who disapproved them. Some of these norms persist for a long time even if they are inefficient from a social or economic viewpoint. This seems the case for the norm of seniority in Italian wage- and pension schemes. In a seniority-based wage system, wage increases with the increase of workers’ age, independently from their productivity. Empirically, these wage systems are strongly associated with early retirement - as in Spain, Greece, Belgium and Italy.A seniority-based wage system and an early retirement pension scheme (after 35-37 years of work seniority) were structured through collective bargaining and legislative lobbying over several decades until they became firm institutions of industrial relations and welfare state. Their costs were and are allocated to the less well - defended social groups (young people and immigrants) and taxpayers - through taxation or adding to the sovereign debt.Data on labor earnings of 2502 workers collected in 2011 from a national sample of workers were regressed on some independent variables. As a source of variation in workers earnings, seniority is more important than education, social origin, sex, area of residence of the worker. The seniority norm advantages especially non-manual workers (including managers), followed by manual workers.It is therefore paradoxical that seniority was chosen as the least popular criterion among the many which can be used for the distribution of earnings - e.g. merit, desert, need, education, responsibility, risk.Data collected in 1980 (non-manual and manual workers in 42 FIAT factories) and 2011 (AGING survey) shows that seniority, as a base of the wage system, was and is preferred only by a small minority of workers: 8,5% on FIAT plants (1980); less of ‘1% in AGING sample (2001).Early retirements pick a broader consensus, particularly among the cohorts of unskilled manual and non-manual workers, aged between 45 and 55 years (data from many surveys between 1996 and 2011).Explanations of the genesis and maintenance of seniority in the wage system and pensions schemes are offered. Reasons for its adoption were the simplicity of its application; the ability to avoid distributional conflicts among workers -- in a normative setting with many lines of cleavage; and the desire of entrepreneurs to obtain from their workers internalization of the objectives of the firm. The role of the government in the ‘40s and ‘50s (public workers) and unions from the 70s (industry and tertiary workers) were also appreciated. The opacity of costs allocation and the absence of political entrepreneurs for organizing collective action could explain the pragmatic acceptance of the seniority norm by the affected people. For now.