Negotiations for the renewal of the national labor contract in the textile clothing fashion sector are still on hold, involving around 500.000 workers and which is among the most important contracts in the Italian manufacturing industry.
The workers' unions did not make any progress towards Sistema Moda Italia during the meeting held today in Milan with the intention of finding a unified position.
Last March, SMI had presented the unions with a package of proposals on which it had opened discussions. The answer came only from the economic section: the trade union organizations, in fact, had proposed a renewal scheme which proposed to strengthen the company level and which the entrepreneurial delegation had deemed acceptable.
On the regulatory proposals, on the other hand, divisions of approach had emerged between the three union organizations and, overall, an impossibility to address the issue.
On the regulatory side, in addition to updating the contract with respect to the changes made to the labor market (apprenticeship, fixed-term contracts, etc.) and the definition of a special discipline for commercial distribution workers, SMI had proposed to intervene on the issues timetables to ensure, in the times and ways, the application in the company of some institutions already envisaged and governed by the national contract.
Finally, as regards the discipline of the individual employment relationship, SMI had decided to intervene on the discipline of sick leave, in the part relating to the payment methods for the first three days of each event, which are the exclusive responsibility of the employer ( INPS pays its allowance only from the fourth day): compared to the current payment, always 50%.
Today there was no factual response from the unions regarding the proposals. “In this contractual round, contrary to what happened in the past – said Carlo Mascellani, deputy general manager of Sistema Moda Italia and head of the business delegation – something seems not to work in the relationship between the parties. SMI, even in the presence of a very difficult situation for the sector, had identified a courageous but practicable way to define a contractual renewal between the parties capable of responding both to the competitiveness needs of the companies and to the legitimate economic needs of the workers ”.
