Collective bargaining in Italy over the past 25 years: evidence from Banca d'Italia's database on the most representative CBAs

This paper describes the institutional framework for national collective bargaining and examines the trends in negotiated wages between 2000 and 2025, using Banca d'Italia's database on the 50 most representative collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in the non-farm private sector. The bargaining framework allows for substantial flexibility in sector-level negotiations, both in the timing of renewals and in determining wage increases and any adjustments for deviations between expected and actual inflation. Over the past 25 years, negotiated wages increased by 61.2 per cent overall in nominal terms, on average across sectors, but declined by 1.3 per cent in real terms, mainly owing to the high inflation recorded in 2021-23. The loss in the purchasing power of negotiated wages was more pronounced in private services, where delays in CBA renewals were longer. The analysis of the relationship between negotiated and actual wages suggests that second-level bargaining partly compensated workers during these delays.