This PhD thesis tracks the history of the Italian unemployment welfare during the second half of the twentieth century, offering an account of why the Italian system of social security never established a universal safety net against unemployment, choosing instead a social policy system targeted on the core industrial workforce. During the post-war period, Italian unemployment insurance remained severely lacking compared to other European countries. To compensate, the country relied on the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni (CIG), a short time work scheme providing a wage replacement allowance to compensate employees in the industrial sector for a temporary reduction of their working time. Starting from the late 1960s, the scope and duration of the CIG were progressively expanded to tackle manpower redundancies, catering for the weakness of other forms of support. During the 1970s and the 1980s, short time emerged as the chief instrument to cushion the economic and social consequences of the industrial crisis of the country. This thesis explains the peculiar characteristics of the Italian unemployment welfare model as a consequence of the country's pattern of labour conflict, showing how industrial relations and social policy influenced one another. In the early postwar decades, while the unions were organisationally weak, the CIG emerged as a less expensive alternative to general unemployment insurance. This engendered a path dependent effect. Following the rise of industrial unrest and the strengthening of organised labour in the early 1970s, unions and employers favoured the increasing use of the CIG so as to protect their respective interests for job security and manpower flexibility, at the expense of the weaker strata of the labour market. Far from being a simple instrument of income maintenance, the CIG played a key role in shaping social relations of production at the work-place level and was used to diffuse industrial conflict on the shop floor. With the onset of deindustrialisation, during the 1980s, the CIG became a powerful tool for the demobilisation of organised labour.

Depuis les années 1990 en Europe, les mesures et les dispositifs publics adoptés au nom de l’emploi trouvent notamment leur expression dans les principes guidant le débat sur la flexisécurité. Ainsi, au niveau national émergent des politiques visant à encadrer les transitions professionnelles dans un contexte de flexibilité et de précarisation accrue du marché du travail. Si au niveau européen nous pouvons observer une tendance assez transversale, les orientations sous-jacentes aux dispositifs de la politique de l’emploi encadrant les transitions professionnelles demeurent spécifiques aux contextes sociétaux. La situation italienne, où le maintien du contrat de travail dans le chômage partiel par la Cassa Integrazione Guadagni a été longtemps préféré à l’indemnisation du chômage sur le marché du travail, fait l’objet de cette thèse. La thèse s’attache à révéler les enjeux d’une régulation de l’emploi, du salaire et du travail fruit de l’action revendicative syndicale d’opposition à la logique des mobilités sur le marché du travail. Elle repose sur l’analyse diachronique et synchronique de l’action revendicative des principaux acteurs syndicaux structurée autour du maintien du contrat de travail. Si l’analyse diachronique (1941-2013) a permis de retracer un projet syndical de revendication de régulation des mobilités professionnelles dans l’emploi, l’analyse synchronique a montré à partir des registres de justifications véhiculés par les acteurs, l’appropriation d’un dispositif de garantie dans l’emploi. / Since the 90s in Europe, the measures and public schemes on behalf of employment have been largely covered by the debate on flexicurity. Thus, at the national level, some policies aiming at framing the career transitions, in a context of labour market flexibility and ever-increasing precarity, have emerged. If, at the European level we can observe a rather transverse trend, the underlying orientations for employment policy schemes relative to career transitions, specifically depend on societal contexts. This thesis will highlight the Italian situation, for which the work contract maintained by the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni into the short-time working has been for a long time preferred to the unemployment compensation. The work will be particularly focused on the stakes of the employment, wage and labour regulation, supported by the industrial action which is opposed to mobility on the labour market. It will be based on the diachronic and synchronic analysis of the industrial action led by the main union actors in order to maintain the work contract. On the one hand the diachronic analysis (1941-2013) allowed us to consider a project of union action concerning the regulation of work-related mobility, and on the other hand the synchronic analysis showed, from the actors’ justifications, the appropriation of an employment security scheme.