The thirst for workers grows, but each year more and more companies are left empty-handed . The Island knows this well as summer approaches: there are tens of thousands of available jobs, more and more . But what is lacking are suitable candidates, even for the least qualified positions.
And so, for a few weeks now , the hunt for figures to be employed during the tourist season has started again . Whether they are waiters between the tables of a restaurant or drivers for parcel delivery services, clerks for clothing stores or cleaners in hotels.
THE NUMBERS – The monthly report by Infocamere , based on the requests that the companies themselves make to local employment centers, confirms the short circuit : contracts ready to be signed in Sardinia by June would be over 46 thousand, a record number and about 1,600 more than last year . The driving sector, as anticipated, is tourism , but in the wake of the holiday success , business services, logistics, manufacturing and road haulage are also thriving . These are sectors that are desperately trying to increase their staff in view of the hot season, but in 46% of cases, again according to Infocamere, they are unable to do so.
RESEARCH – «Many restaurant entrepreneurs have now made a virtue of necessity», admits Emanuele Frongia, regional president of Fipe-Confcommercio . «They moved in advance to look for the necessary staff and those who were unable to fill all the empty slots have rescheduled their opening hours to stay open». A shortage of staff that clashes with the other side of the coin of the sector where many entrepreneurs complain about a phenomenon as paradoxical as it is widespread: that of deserting job interviews. «Only 20% of those who make an appointment, then keep it», say some restaurateurs in the centre of Cagliari. However, there is something apparently inexplicable in the world of work because the difficulty in finding employees involves all sectors and cannot be justified only by the poor economic offer proposed by companies .
WAGE REBUS – Francesco Porcu, regional secretary of the Cna, has been repeating it for some time: «The inadequacy of wages is a national phenomenon that hits the South hardest, and with it Sardinia, due to the lack of a productive fabric that also pushes wages». The business representative presses the same point: « Tourism, although a driving force in Sardinia, certainly cannot do without the share of temporary and seasonal workers and for this reason it has limited margins for productive improvement compared to other sectors such as industry and manufacturing because it can go ahead with low-skilled laborers who can in turn aspire to low wages» . The path to follow is therefore necessarily that of innovation : «The Island must emerge from a state that we could define as productive "underdevelopment", says Porcu. « Without investments there is no productivity or innovation , much less growth and therefore the ability to intercept qualified and expert laborers».
Future Vittorio Pelligra, full professor of Economic Policy at the University of Cagliari, reiterates the concept with even more concreteness. «The increase in wages for millions of Italians is obviously not free. Someone will have to pay for it. And if taxes can serve to help the weakest groups maintain a decent purchasing power, for the rest of the workers the only way is to increase the productivity of the companies that hired them and can increase their salaries, but only with the right conditions». The economist knows, however, that this is not a process that can be started overnight. « Increasing the productivity of a country requires decades, essential to invest in research and innovation to make companies grow . But also in education and school dropout to improve the training of aspiring workers. In short, it must be the result of long-term work that only a shared strategy between institutions, unions and companies can carry forward successfully»