The Minister of Labor and Social Policies, Nunzia Catalfo: “An innovative intervention, that of the New Skills Fund that goes decisively in the direction of active policies, training and growth of workers”.

It has been published on the website of ANPAL, the National Agency for Active Labor Policies, the notice that regulates the procedure for obtaining the contributions allocated by the New Skills Fund.

After the signing of the Implementing Decree, which took place at the end of October, the Fund is fully operational, whose endowment has risen to 730 million euros,compared to the initial 230.

Included among the measures provided for by the Relaunch Decree and confirmed, as well as strengthened, by the August Decree,the Fund is an unprecedented instrument:on the one hand, since it focuses on training and retraining of resources, it has a strongly active connotation; on the other hand, it is an alternative to the Layoff, with benefits for both employers and workers. All this, through an intervention that supports companies even in the delicate process of adaptation to the new organizational and production models determined by the epidemiological emergency in progress.

Recipients of the Fund are the”employers of the private sector who have stipulated collective agreements for the remodulation of working time for changed organizational and productive needs of the company”, in accordance with the provisions of art. 88, paragraph 1, of Decree-Law 19 May 2020 n.34, the Relaunch Decree.

The collective agreements must provide for “training projects, the number of workers involved in the intervention and the number of hours of working time to be allocated to paths for the development of skills” and be stipulated by 31 December 2020. In practice, working hours can be remodulated to allow employees to attend training courses whose costs for companies, thanks to the intervention of the Fund, will be borne by the State. In addition, there will be no reduction in pay for workers compared to the usual mechanisms of the Layoff.