Today was another incandescent day for Alitalia, with the unions on a war footing following the meeting with top management during which news that was anything but positive for the airline's employees arrived.
The industrial plan with which the top management tries to save the company in extremis, obtaining the go-ahead from Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, puts more than 2 redundancies on the plate and heavy salary cuts that have prompted the trade associations to proclaim yet another strike, this time on April 5th.
Going into the details of the plan presented by the managing director Cramer Ball, difficult times are ahead for Alitalia employees. The project envisages 2.037 redundancies for shore personnel, involving both temporary and permanent workers (1.338 on permanent contracts, 558 on fixed-term contracts and 141 abroad).
But that may not be all. As far as flight personnel are concerned, the unions do not provide data but point out that solidarity for 400 employees expires in August.
The same company, in a note, speaks of “important measures relating to labor costs, such as a reduction in personnel and the agreement on a new National Collective Labor Agreement, necessary to make Alitalia's cost structure more competitive. The plan provides for a reduction in the workforce that will affect up to 2.000 jobs, relating to permanent and fixed-term contracts, or a 51% reduction in office staff and 20% for operational staff (non-flight). The airline currently employs 12.500 people in Italy and abroad”.
The bad news doesn't end there. Alitalia plans to implement thoughtful cuts to the salaries of both pilots and flight attendants. Speaking of the former, the salary should be reduced by 28% for medium-haul employees and by 22% for long-haul flyers. It is even worse for the flight attendants who could face a 32% reduction.
Long-awaited numbers, which however have sent the unions into a rage who, without even waiting for the new meeting scheduled for Monday in the presence of ministers Carlo Calenda and Graziano Delrio, have already proclaimed a 24-hour strike for next April 5:
"It is not about these numbers, it cannot be negotiated," said the national secretary of the Filt CGIL, Nino Cortorillo, at the end of the meeting. «Today we were not presented with a real business plan, which may provide for cost cutting but a prospect of relaunch: this instead only provides for cost cutting».
