TO EARN €136,000 ($181,590), a browse of the internet suggests, you need to be an IT operations director at a British firm, governor of New York state—or an usciere (usher) in the Italian parliament. An usciere’s duties include carrying messages, accompanying visitors and looking dignified in uniforms laden with gold braid. The sole occupational hazard is of a punch in the eye while intervening in the occasional brawl between lawmakers.

Now, however, the uscieri face a second danger: a cut in their salaries. In May, Matteo Renzi’s government put a €240,000 cap on annual public-sector earnings. That will directly affect “only” about 130 of Italy’s 2,300 parliamentary employees. But other salaries are to be reduced to keep pay differentials the same. Earnings of an usher nearing retirement are expected to drop over a three-year period from €136,000 to a miserly €100,000-105,000.

Last month several hundred parliamentary workers besieged a meeting of deputies who had gathered to agree on a draft plan. As the deputies left, they encountered a barrage of ironic applause and shouts of “Didn’t touch your own salaries, did you?” This unprecedented scene was a foretaste of the difficulties Mr Renzi faces as he attempts to take on entrenched interests in Italian society.

The speaker of the lower house reminded the protesters that beyond Montecitorio, the palace housing the chamber, there was a real country—one where more than a decade of economic stagnation has reduced real GDP per person to the level of 1998. Inside parliament, years of long service have kept salaries rising inexorably. Figures leaked to a television reporter last year showed that most parliamentary workers could expect their salaries to quadruple in real terms over a 40-year career.

“The justification for all this is a word, ‘autodichia’, the doctrine that says parliament should have total freedom to manage itself so it does not come under pressure from the government,” says Sergio Rizzo, co-author of “La Casta”, a best-selling book on the privileges of Italy’s political class. Talks between the government and the trade unions representing the uscieri will take place in the next few weeks. They’ll need a big table: there are 11 unions who have members working in the lower house and 14 in the Senate.