Women are enemy number one in a covert war in Italian workplaces. They are the hidden victims of a backward, chauvinist capitalist class, enemy number one in a covert war. Some 800,000 Italian women are forced out of their jobs every year by unscrupulous and deceitful employers, new official figures show.

It is a national scandal known forced resignations and it works like this.

At the start of their employment new recruits are asked to sign a blank or undated letter of resignation along with their contract.

They are told it’s just a formality and it’s understandable that many don’t question this when, as in most of the cases, it comes packaged with a prized permanent post.

An offer that can’t be refused, you could say.

But then you want to start a family. That’s when the pre-prepared resignation letter is pulled out of the employer’s file, dusted down and dated.

And instead of looking forward to maternity leave, the employee is sent home for good. Figures show 90 per cent of cases relate to women who become pregnant.

To make matters worse, there’s only a slim chance of obtaining justice after the event, as it has proved very difficult in the courts to show that the employee didn’t voluntarily hand in their notice.

We are not talking here of a backward country that simply hasn’t caught up with the times.

Provisions for maternity are actually pretty good by European standards.

But for many women the clock is being turned back, in particular the younger generation. Thirteen per cent of those born after 1973 lose their jobs through this route compared with 6.8 per cent of those born between 1946 and 1953.

The centre-left government of Romano Prodi that was elected in 2006 clamped down on this illegal practice by introducing an official system of numbering and a 15-day shelf-life for resignation forms.

But this had barely been put in place when the subsequent right-wing administration of Silvio Berlusconi, elected in spring 2008, effectively neutralised it, thus ensuring Italy has one of the lowest employment rates among women in the EU.

The current “technical” government of Mario Monti is now at loggerheads with unions over plans to change labour laws that will make it easier to fire workers.

This isn’t a “reform,” according to the more established definition of the word, before neoliberals began applying it to cases of social regression.

A genuine reform, instead, would be to end a practice that forces women to choose between motherhood and work.

In recent days Italy’s blogosphere and the opposition Democrats have stepped up campaigning on the issue. Will Monti, who has declared a commitment to “fairness” and “equity,” listen?

It’s misery for people in Spain these days. Well, most Spaniards, not the likes of Francisco Luzon, a senior executive at Santander bank.

Luzon, it emerged this week, has left the country’s largest bank with a pension of €56 million.

His retirement nest egg is quite a bit larger than the €860-odd a month the average Spaniard gets, or rather, will get once he or she has worked those extra two years (until 67) that form part of changes to the pension system introduced last year.

The aim of the pension “reform,” and indeed cuts to pay, welfare and public services, is to help reduce the deficit.

That’s the deficit caused by Luzon and others within the upper echelons of the world of finance, whose reckless lending and speculation led to a gigantic bubble that burst, wrecking the economy and thus the public finances.

The scary thing is that Luzon, who also earned €1.66m in “fixed” pay in 2011, isn’t top of Santander’s gold-plated pension league.

Chief executive officer Alfredo Saenz has €87m in retirement funds.

In contrast, the chairman Emilio Botin only has €25m to look forward to in his old age. My heart bleeds.

Tom Gill blogs at revolting-europe.com