‘Milano Lavoro’: An Agreement for Employment in Milan

On 2 February 2000 the Milan Municipal Administration and the social parties (except for CGIL) signed an agreement aimed at promoting the creation of new employment in Milan and to combat the phenomena of irregular and clandestine work. Despite being relative to a limited geographical area like that of the Milan municipality, the agreement has created national interest as a pilot project for employment which could be duplicate in other metropolitan areas. In the context of European Strategy for Employment it could, moreover, represent, after an initial experimental phase, one of those best practices designed to make the work-force more adaptable to the changing needs of the labour market. Not by chance the agreement primarily identifies as its beneficiaries, although not exclusively, individuals with special problems of insertion into the labour market: non-EC citizens who are unemployed; workers over 40 years of age who have been excluded from the labour market due to reduction or change activity and put on the list of mobility and placement and, finally, those in situations of mental/physical or social disability.