This article investigates the public debate on local minimum wages policies in Italy. We consider two different time-periods: the first refers to the period when workers fought for the abolition of a wage scheme that differentiated wages across Italian provinces (the so-called «gabbie salariali», in 1968-69), while the second includes the period of public debate on local minimum wages when the issue came again into the public agenda (from the 90s onwards). The main goal of a textual analysis of newspapers is to show: i) the frames used by relevant public actors; ii) the coalitions of actors among competing frames. Finally, the article discuss the relation between the frames used by actors and the intractable character inherent to the policy investigated.