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This article offers a short review of the main tools available to the European Union (Eu) for intervening in social and labour policy. This analysis aims to illustrate the themes that are part of the social dialogue in Europe, the European employment strategy (Ees) and the process for coordinating pensions policy, known as the Open Method of Coordination (Omc). For each of these tools we shall try to evaluate the degree of involvement of the social partners, with particular reference to the trade union movement. Beyond the European rhetoric based on «social partnership», the concrete development of the three processes illustrates a limited involvement of the unions in European governance with the risk of making their influence on the European agenda for social and labour policy marginal.

The social partners, both employers and trade unions, played a substantial role in the «old politics» expanding pension systems in Europe; they are still active in the «new politics» of pension reforms. Given the electoral impact and political veto points, governments may seek to overcome reform blockage in political decision-making and implementation by social consensus seeking. Besides political interest politics, various modes of social governance are discussed: institutional consultation of the social groups, tripartite concertation between governments and the social partners, institutionalized forms of self-administration of pension insurance, and self-regulation via negotiated occupational pensions.

The following pages contain a series of structured interviews carried out in September and October 2008 and give an important picture of the current situation of the Italian unions. The interviewees are Susanna Camusso, Confederal Secretary Cgil, Dept of Productive Sector Sector Policies; Carla Cantone, General Secretary of Spi-Cgil; Franco Martini, General Secretary of Filcams-Cgil; Morena Piccinini, Confederal Secretary Cgil, Dept of Welfare and New Rights; Giorgio Santini, Confederal Secretary Cisl, Dept of Labour, Training and Development in Southern Italy; and Claudio Treves, co-ordinator of the Dept of Labour Policies in the Cgil. The interviews are organised in two parts: the first, common to all the interviews, consists of two general questions on the subject of representation and the efforts and real capacity of the unions to see and interpret the post-Fordist socio-economic changes in the perspective of building up a welfare system; the second has three different questions for each interviewee on more specific matters and union dynamics connected with bargaining and the new role of local bargaining, the identity of the unions and their specific role in European policies.

In Italy one may detect quite a long, although largely unknown, history of diffused relationships between trade unions and local-level governments and institutions, which over time resulted in practices of union involvement in and contribution to the design and implementation of labor and social policies at the periphery of the Ir system. This phenomenon is largely dependent on the characteristics and limits of the Italian welfare system as a whole. The article discusses the phases and logics of this concealed history, focusing on their main features and outcomes. Two main phases and two main logics of action are pointed out. While in a first period - during the 1970s and 1980s - the initiative of the unions in the field of labor and social policies at the territorial level was essentially contingent and reactive in character, aimed at seizing opportunities and/or coping with emergencies, subsequently - during the last two decades - such initiative turned out to be more intentional and strategic in orientation, entering into the redefinition of the unions’ representative strategy targeted to specific groups of workers and citizens.

The Protocol on pensions, jobs and competition of 23 July 2007 is certainly one of the most important agreements between government and social partners in recent years, for its farrangingness and for the debate it has set off in public opinion. This is partly due to the significant involvement of workers in the referendum held on the text, as well as the high percentage of approval for its solutions. In method and solutions it provides an opportunity to analyse how consultation has developed and how it stands on an essentially bipolar political scene, and to verify the state of health of Italy’s welfare system in an age of epoch-making challenges such as globalisation and the ageing of the population. The article examines the structure of the protocol in relation to the pensions system, the regulation of labour relations and the labour market, and the competitiveness of the system.

This article gives a historical analysis of pensions reform in Italy over the last two decades, in the attempt to cast light on the role of the unions in the political process and make some suggestions as to the redistributory consequences of the reforms agreed, commenting on the competing strategies of the negotiators to distribute the costs and benefits of the new measures. A study of the various reforms agreed and their redistributory effects (particularly the 1995 Dini Reform) makes possible an initial evaluation of the unions’ work. While some of the literature has emphasised their defence of their members’ interests (to the detriment of collective interests) this analysis shows a more complex interaction between ideas and preferences. The brief comparison with other European countries confirms the need to consider interests in order to understand the reform processes of the so-cial policies and their outcomes, even with a more wide-ranging approach.

The unions originated and developed as organisations in defence of professional interests, but in some countries this basic aim has been supplemented by another pursuing general interests. In some countries the unions’ activities on behalf of the whole community are officially recognised, while in others the unions themselves began to perform them spontaneously. Widespread throughout Europe, the phenomenon has always been particularly marked in Italy. The essay examines the public-spiritedness of the Italian unions, its origins and development, the main areas in which it is expressed, and the advantages and disadvantages of this way of pursuing public interests. The conclusion aims to bring out the benefits that would derive from a fuller implementation of the principles of the constitution.

Recent studies of the development of European welfare systems have put the changes in industrial relations and the role of the unions at the centre. At national and European level the «Danish model» of flexicurity has been seen as «good practice» and a model to follow in the in-terests of a greater balance between fairness and efficiency in the labour market. The author sees these choices as part of the process of globalisation and of the historical context of Scandinavian countries, and indicates the factors of continuity and divergence between the proposal of flexicurity, supported by the European Commission, and the principles of flexibility and social security pursued for decades in Scandinavian countries.

The creation and running of a complex system of social protection has a marked effect on social relations in France. How has joint responsibility in these relations been established and developed? How can it be interpreted given that the State has a central role? The original vindication of social democracy has adapted to a new positioning of subordinate work in French society. There are powerful changes at work that are seeking to reconcile security and professional developments.

The article deals with the relation between union action and the development of welfare, from the first forms of union health assistance down to the more recent changes that are affecting labour regulations. The first part reviews some of the main national experiences that accompanied the development of health assistance along with the first programmes for social protection on the cusp of the XIX and XX centuries. This means examining the expansionist period of Fordist welfare, concentrating on the forms of union involvement in the functioning of the national welfare states. The analysis continues, looking at the changes that marked the crisis of Fordist welfare and the reform processes connected with the new paradigm of active welfare. In particular, it considers the changes that concern union action in the new framework of activation processes, with reference to the practices and forms of involvement - Ghent system/bilateralism - that seem most responsive to the need to reinforce the active intervention of the unions in the labour market.

Bruno Trentin’s text, discovered and introduced by Michele Magno and reprinted in Rps exemplifies the reform proposals of the welfare state he advanced as head of the Planning Department of the Cgil and discussed at its national conference in 1995. The introduction recalls the wider cultural context and the values present in Trentin’s thought. The central idea is that of a welfare society, in which a logic of compensation is replaced with a logic of citizens’ rights. In particular, it examines the crisis of the insurance principle, which requires the transparent involvement of general taxation in financing social security. Its values of solidarity should be founded not only on income distribution, but above all on the offer of real goods and services to people. There is also an explicit appeal to the unions to think of welfare reform systematically, and not identify it almost exclusively with the question of pensions.

Bilateralism is certainly one of the tools with which the Italian unions help run some important segments of national welfare. The origins and development of bilateral bodies is essentially part of this aim and it developed significantly, not everywhere but in some specific environments, as in the case of state involvement in some contractual insurance schemes, of professional training, and of income support on the temporary and/or permanent loss of a job. In this last case this was particularly necessary because of the culpable and continuing lack of universalistic tools of public cover in the case of involuntary loss of work. However, we need to understand whether this surrogate form is to become a general rule, as the centre-right seems to desire, or whether we should seize the opportunity of changes in the labour market to at last see to a structural reform of the system of social protection.

The article examines how the need to successfully reconcile paid work, family responsibilities and private life, an idea summed up in the term «work-life balance», is now part of the political and union debate and has become one of the aims of the European social agenda. The analysis concentrates mainly on the European unions and seeks to bring out the distance between the fine words of community law and the actual state of things. It examines in particular the first two stages of the consultation process of the European social partners, launched by the Commission in 2006 and still developing at the time of writing. The article concludes with a comparison between the polices passed in the countries of northern and southern Europe.