Legalized Nepotism in Italy

Guardian – Voluntary Redundancy or Leave Role to Relative:

“It is a problem many a company faces in these tough times: how to replace older – and costlier – workers with younger, cheaper ones. A Rome bank has what it thinks is the solution: to make the jobs hereditary. Under a deal signed with unions this week, 76 employees of Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Roma (BCC di Roma) must take early retirement but they will get a choice: either take a payoff or leave your job to your son or daughter (or indeed any relative “up to the third degree”, which would allow the post to be left even to great-nieces and nephews).

A recent study found 44% of architects and 42% of lawyers were the children of people who had practised the same profession. It is next to impossible in Italy to own a chemist’s shop unless your father or mother had one because the number of licences that can be bequeathed is controlled by the authorities. Perhaps the most bizarre example of inheritable employment surfaced in Florence, where the legal entitlement to sketch tourists outside the Uffizi gallery was also hereditary. Talent for drawing, of course, may not be passed on.”