"The CNEL Assembly approved, in its session on April 23, the usual annual report that outlines the trends in the labour market and the regulatory and pay structures established by collective bargaining.  
This is not just another report, a mere intellectual exercise filled with cold numbers that often, as happens with complex labour issues, remain open to interpretation and contextualisation.  
The report's function, as explicitly stated in the Mattarellum on CNEL’s responsibilities, is to provide a critical examination of the available public data and their sources, with the goal of facilitating the "political" synthesis of results on specific phenomena.  
An institutional report, the result of an intense and thorough discussion among experts in the field and the representatives of business and labour organisations sitting at CNEL, it contributes to understanding and governing the transformations taking place in the world of work, which profoundly influence public life, both in terms of development dynamics and the pursuit of social cohesion goals. For this reason, CNEL reports – as expressly provided by law – are made available to the Chambers, the Government, and the trade union organisations of workers and employers, as a common reference base, not only for study purposes but, above all, as a tool to support decision-making and the concrete implementation of policies. 
In a public debate increasingly characterised by an uncontrollable excess of data and information, often used to support opposing arguments, the commitment of institutions like CNEL assumes an essential role. Contributing to providing the country with comprehensive, reliable, and as widely shared information as possible – particularly on real trends in employment, productivity, and wages – is a necessary condition for making informed choices in economic and social policy. 
Of particular importance, in this perspective, is the attention the CNEL annual report has given this year to the only existing database that allows for measuring the social metabolism of economic processes related to work. We are referring to the vast material contained in the National Archive of Collective Labour Contracts and Agreements of CNEL, which, in recent times, has itself become the subject of politicised debate in public and political-union communication on labour issues. This is partly due to the opportunism of smaller organisations, which are not representative of the interests of businesses and workers, and have contributed to quadrupling the number of national collective agreements in just a few years.  
This year's report highlights an important finding: of over 1,000 collective agreements deposited in the National Archive, 632 are signed by organisations not represented at CNEL. These agreements have, in most cases, virtually no impact on workers, covering just over 2% of the blue-collar and white-collar workforce. 
In contrast, the 385 national collective agreements signed by organisations represented at CNEL cover more than 14,260,000 workers, or 97% of private sector employees. In particular, the 214 contracts signed by CGIL, CISL, and UIL – representing just 21% of the contracts in the archive – affect 14,055,107 workers, or 96% of private sector workers. These data confirm the strength of our industrial relations system, with levels of collective agreement coverage clearly superior to those recorded in other countries, even where public mechanisms for union registration and collective agreement extension exist. 
A sample survey conducted in the banking sector, traditionally a pioneer in welfare contracts, confirms the growing importance of industrial relations systems in defining supplementary protections, in crucial areas such as pensions, healthcare, and long-term care. 
Another issue the CNEL report aims to clarify is the monitoring of productivity bargaining, which today benefits from significant public support measures, in the form of tax exemptions on variable wages and contributions reductions for joint worker involvement. 
Institutional reports are available on the number of these contracts, which are constantly increasing, and on the amounts subject to incentives. However, what is lacking is a qualitative analysis capable of assessing the effectiveness and real impact of these public measures in relation to the achievement of the stated objectives: business productivity, quality, efficiency, profitability, and innovation.  
Following the invitation of Meuccio Ruini, the first president of CNEL, the report opens with a brief introductory note, offering a cross-sectional and "political" summary of the dynamics recorded in 2024, intended to provide tools for understanding even for non-experts. 
We hope that this report can finally reach a wider audience, helping to form a widespread, critical, and informed awareness of the real condition of the labour market and collective bargaining in Italy".