But adulatory about Paul Deighton’s ‘unalloyed successes’ as the man in charge of logistics & finance for the Olympics, despite the fact that, as reported in another section of the paper, he will face some awkward moments next week when explaining to the Public Accounts Committee the fiasco over the ill-managed GS4 security contracts.
But King saves his most disobliging comments for Susanna Camusso, head of the Italian union CGIL.
His complaint centres on his apparent belief that the Italian system of making 13 monthly payments a year of salaries & pensions means that the workers get 8½% more than a UK employee who receives only 12 payments.
As someone who has, sometimes, more than half seriously, been fond of advocating that we adopt the same system in this country I must defend my understanding of what this really means.
Salaried employees are usually offered an annual sum in return for their contracted services; custom & practice (&, maybe, the law) dictate that this be paid in 12 equal instalments, commonly towards the end of each calendar month, with no adjustments made for the actual number of days in that month.
In Italy the total annual sum is divided into 13 equal instalments; these are disbursed just one per month from January to November, with a double instalment in December. The purpose being to help with the expenses of Christmas.
This can be seen as a kindness, a way of helping employees, especially in the days before plastic credit became easy to come by, a kind of mandatory Christmas Club of the kind offered by many organisations (including major supermarkets) & presumably safer than that once offered by Farepak
Alternatively it can be seen as a compulsory, interest free loan to the employer.
Susanna Camusso’s proposal, that this years 13th payment be tax free, in order to boost consumer expenditure, seems on the face of it no more unreasonable than other wheezes, such as a temporary reduction in the rate of VAT
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