With the month of July, the rules of the supplementary pension game in the private sector change: to decide the destination of their severance pay, new hires will no longer have the old six months, but only 60 days. The acceleration imposed by the latest budget law aims, in the intentions of the executive, to attract a significant portion of that 60% of workers who still do not have a supplementary pension. Bureaucratic complications and frictions between state laws and unions are the risks feared by this change of pace.
Only two months and an irreversible decision
With the new regime, the silent consent mechanism, the private sector employee is automatically included – from the first day of work – in the category negotiation fund. The contributions paid by the worker, the employer’s share and the entire severance pay provision will immediately flow into this fund.
To free themselves from this automatic procedure, the employee must complete a specific refusal form within two months of hiring. In this way he will be able to keep the payment in the company or in the INPS treasury fund.
Ignorance is not allowed: forgetting the form or letting the deadline pass will eliminate the opportunity to change your mind. Membership of the supplementary pension plan is in fact irreversible.
In companies where there are multiple funds, the worker will automatically be associated with the one that has the greatest number of members among his colleagues, while in the rare cases of absence of a contractual fund he will be merged into the residual fund of the metalworkers category, the Cometa.
Companies and unions
Faced with this, and with a slow-moving bureaucratic machine, companies are already exerting strong pressure on the government to obtain a technical postponement of the departure.
Added to this is the right to portability of the employer’s contribution, introduced by the economic measure, which allows anyone to abandon their category fund to move to an open fund or an Individual Pension Plan (PIP) managed by banks and insurance companies, also taking with them the economic share paid by the company.
On the social partners’ front, CGIL, CISL, UIL and the main employers’ associations, including Confindustria and Confcommercio, have signed a pact to circumvent the rule, committing themselves to establish in collective agreements that the employer’s contribution remains exclusive to those who remain in the sector fund.
This, however, would open the way to legal disputes, since a union agreement cannot have greater value than a state law.
