In April, 2022, there’s just no escaping the fact that almost everything is getting more expensive. If you have a few standby items you always pick up at the grocery store, those are no doubt more expensive now than they were a year ago. How much costs have risen will vary based on where you live, of course, but every little bit makes a difference—especially if your pay hasn’t also gone up at the same time.
That’s why braking specialist Brembo recently announced its plan to provide a € 1,000 (approximately $1,037) cost of living bonus to each of its employees in Italy. The bonus payment will go out to every employee in Italy along with their usual pay packet for the month of May.
A memo written on Friday, May 6, 2022, cited the “Italian macroeconomic context in which the cost of living has increased significantly,” according to local paper L’Eco di Bergamo. The company has reportedly set aside a total of € 6M (about $6,223,020) for this specific purpose.
It’s a one-time payment, and it’s not clear if there will be anything similar offered at any point in the future. Still, it seems that some amount of help is usually better than no help at all, and perhaps other companies might take a cue from Brembo and try to take similar actions on behalf of their employees in these difficult times. (Hey, we can always hope, right?) A raise would of course be even nicer, but some money is always better than none.
As the world continues to recover from the devastating effects that a couple of years’ worth of a global pandemic has wrought upon many of us—not to mention the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis, and plenty of other urgent problems clamoring for our attention—it's important to look for these small glimpses of hope. Those times when a person, or even a company, stands up and says “I’m going to do this one small thing that I can do, because it’s the right thing to do.” The fact is, while a gesture might be small, it can still matter. Obviously, € 1,000 isn’t going to completely solve anyone’s financial worries—but it’s certainly not nothing, either.
