In Italy, factories are more advanced than the work that takes place there and the rules and systems of work classification adapt to changes very slowly. This is what emerges from the Fim and AQCF Research entitled "Employees and executives towards work 4.0", presented at the Bicocca University of Milan by the National Fim Cisl, by the AQCFR (the cadre association of the FCA group) and by the "Labor and Society" study centre.
The research involved 10 engineering companies: FCA, CNHI, Dedalus, Denso, Leonardo, Baker Higes, Fedral Mogul Powertrain, Sadi, Skf, Urmet, Vishay, For a total of 1.416 workers of which 65,7% white collar workers and 33,3% middle managers.
According to the results of the analysis, the best judgments on participation and work come from employees connected to production. In general, the increase in responsibility does not correspond to an increase in autonomy. The fact that as many as 66% of employees do not experience or partially experience the dimension of job performance is judged "a great defeat and at the same time an issue on which to concentrate strategies in a country where, too often, those who have a job, any age, count down to retirement.”
88% of workers say they stick to their job for a sort of "corporate security/pride", but at the same time claim that they are not professionally repaid for this feeling of identity.
For administrative workers, it was management software that changed the job: SAP in particular, which for 82,50% of the workers interviewed was the novelty of recent years. Smartwatches, tablets and smartphones, together with specialist software, are among the technologies that have become part of the daily work of office workers and salespeople, but also and above all of production technicians, together with the IOT and social communication.
The impact of AI (artificial intelligence), augmented reality and computing systems with virtual simulations is still limited, affecting about 10% of the workers interviewed.
The study highlighted how over half (56%) of workers ask for adequate and measurable recognition of their professionalism through an evaluation system that increases meritocracy and growth opportunities, together with a training course that helps to learn new things.
Greater flexibility in time management is requested in particular by production engineers (56% of respondents). On the other hand, the response of over half of the workers interviewed on their attachment to the company was tepid, while as far as the union is concerned, only 32.7% of white collars and managers are registered, while 53% turn to workers' representatives only to find solutions to your own problems.
"We still have a professional framework that stands still in 1973 - writes the FIM Cisl - it is absurd, after more than 40 years, with work and professionalism profoundly changed, we need more courage and to seize the opportunities that contracts such as those of FCA, CNHI, Leonardo have fielded with the contract and supplementary agreements. Participation must be linked and activated, as we have done at Manfrotto, with training. Both are fundamental for the future of companies and workers”.
The study “also demonstrates how the traditional trade union is increasingly useless. The simple claim does not intercept or bring people together, even in the most manual tasks it is necessary to put in place an innovative union capable of finding solutions that keep the protest together with the proposal through new representation tools such as smart contracts and new technologies. But above all we need a union that oversees, certifies and guarantees the reskill of workers in quality and quantity. Our challenge is to move from job protection to skills development, as a strategic axis of the future union".
According to the Fim Cisl secretary, Marco Bentivogli, the idea of "Hybrid contract”, a contract for each worker who has a collective, solidarity part of his employment relationship and a share that includes aspects of the work that ultimately concern only individual bargaining, in which the worker is often alone and with the same scarce bargaining power as a self-employed person but without having the benefits.
