A FEW months ago during a dinner party at home the conversation turned to the changing Italy, the so-called "New Italy" that may or may not emerge from the current period of institutional and political flux. There were seven people seated at the table, two Irish (me and my wife), one Spanish (a journalist colleague) and four Italian friends.
When thee conversation turned to proposed reforms of Italy's huge public service sector, involving privatisation and pension reviews, the four Italians were less than enthusiastic.
Not only do they all believe in the welfare state, Italian-style, but more importantly all four work for the state; Oscar in a government think-tank, Corrado in the sports ministry, Simona in the ministry for foreign trade and Lucia in an employment office.
Given that we live in Rome, the seat of central government with an obviously high concentration of state employees, you could suggest that the dinner table statistic means nothing.
Not so. Approximately 4.5 million Italians work for the state, with some 2.2 million employed directly by Central Administration. In other words, 18 per cent (almost one in five) of Italian workers are employed by the state, so that there are roughly six civil servants for every 100 inhabitants. Put simply, post-war Italy has created for itself the largest network of state control of public life known in the West.
To be a statale in Italy, to work for the state, is not so much a job as a way of planning for life. At the end of September when the ministry of finance advertised 2,000 jobs for typists, clerks and archivists, it attracted no fewer than 1,400,000 applications.
Yes, nearly one and half million young Italians were willing to apply for a state job which would guarantee them an annual after-tax salary of less than £10,000 a year.
And this massive interest in state jobs is nothing new. Two years ago 83,000 people applied for 330 police jobs, 200,000 applied for 3,782 largely secretarial jobs at the justice ministry, 150,000 applied for 700 jobs in the forestry service and 200,000 applied for 3,366 jobs in the finance police.
In the short term, such huge numbers of applicants create serious logistical problems. The ministry of finance must next week explain just where and when it will hold public examinations for 1.4 million people.
One and a half million exam and registration papers will be printed, extra private buildings hired and thousands employed to supervise. Ministry sources estimate that the total cost will come to £2 million approximately.
So, what is all the fuss about? Why do so many Italians want such a job?
The answer, of course, is security, otherwise known as il posto (the secure job). The post-war Italian job market has never operated along purely meritocratic lines.
The young Italian looking for work finds himself or herself confronted with a job market comprising, on the one hand, a huge state and semi-state sector that accounts for more than 50 per cent of industrial output and, on the other hand, a private sector still dominated by a handful of powerful families (Agnelli of Fiat is the obvious example) who control more than half the value of the entire Milan bourse. Without a strong raccomandazione (pull), he or she may not find work in either sector.
Raccomandazione or not, it is obvious that, in times of 12 per cent unemployment, private-sector opportunities for the first-time worker (graduate or not) are limited. As for the public service, there is some faint hope. Raccomandazione helps but not to an all-exclusive extent. Such jobs can be had on merit.
Furthermore, the public service, unlike the private sector, guarantees not only job security but also unpressurised work. For some of the more energetic public servants clocking-off times allow time for a second job, a family run-shop or other small business.
Above all, public service employment entitles the worker to benefit from Italy's generous pension schemes: workers with a full quota of social security payments can retire on up to 80 per cent of their salary.
However, in a country with a zero population growth rate and where the number of inhabitants over the age of 65 (16 per cent) outnumbers those under the age of 15 (15 per cent) such a generous pensions scheme is due for reform. It is a simple calculation: if more people are collecting pensions than paying pension contributions, then the national debt can only get bigger.
If a "New Italy" is to emerge, then radical reform of the public service sector pensions included seems inevitable. Ironically the task of instigating such reform falls to the first-ever left-wing Italian government, sustained largely by the former communist Democratic Left (PDS).
In such a "New Italy" maybe one and a half million young people could think of something better to do than apply for secretarial work at the ministry of finance.