This story originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch on May 30, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Peoples Dispatch (PD) speaks to Maurizio Coppola from the Italian leftist political party Potere al Popolo (Power to the People) regarding the policies of the far-right government in Italy led by Giorgia Meloni and the campaigns undertaken by the Italian working class to resist the anti-worker, anti-refugee, and misogynist policies of the ruling coalition .
Peoples Dispatch (PD): Can you tell us about Potere al Popolo’s campaign to ensure a minimum wage of 10 euros (US$ 10.72 USD) per hour in Italy. What has been the government’s response to instituting a minimum wage in the country?
Maurizio Coppola (MC): Italy is one of a few countries in the European Union without a legal minimum wage; 21 out of 27 EU countries have instituted minimum wages. In Italy, minimum wages are only determined in collective labor agreements, but these salaries are often very low — around four to six euros per hour. In addition, Italy is the only country in the continent where since 1990, real wages are not growing — they even diminished by 3% in the last 30 years. Thus, one out of 10 people in Italy are working poor, among the youth, this number increases to one out of six.
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