“We are deeply disappointed with yesterday's meeting with the top management of Federmeccanica and Assistal. Before starting a conflict process, we had asked, out of scruple, for a comparison to fully verify if it was possible to bridge the wider gap concerning the contractual structure of the salary. But, after 6 months of negotiations, Federmeccanica's position has literally marred on its position announced in November and formalized in the meeting of 22 December 2015”. This was stated by the general secretary of the Fim Cisl, Marco Bentivogli.
“The disappointment – he added – also emerges from the fact that Federmeccanica seems to have literally gone insistently to seek a break and a strike, almost invoking it. However, we asked to continue the comparison. As we announced after the meeting of March 15, from today we will fight and negotiate, we will never leave the table. Like Fim, we hoped for a different epilogue, also on times and rituals, because all the conditions were there to find sustainable, practicable and acceptable solutions also on the salary proposal".
According to Bentivogli, moreover, "the overall proposal of Federmeccanica, although disruptive on the salary, collects requests that the Fim and the metalworkers have been making for years: the subjective right to training, supplementary welfare, the updating of the classification, stopped in 1973, the participation, are not intuitions of Federmeccanica, but of the union that has been asking for them for 10 years. Not only that, for us it is positive that Federmeccanica's proposal eliminates a scenario that is too plastered, which risks accompanying and accelerating the decline of industrial relations. Common goal, but with counterproductive and contradictory solutions”.
President Storchi "remarked the need for a Guarantee and Protection Contract - continued Bentivogli -, with new, more modern and adequate protections (welfare and training) with new industrial relations (participation). We are well aware that out of a €100 gross increase in the national salary, after taxes, €65 goes to the workers, €80 on the company salary comes and €100 is welfare. But we continue to ask that the wage increase protect the defense of purchasing power. Sharable goals, wrong recipes. What we cannot agree with is a salary structure that contains too many contradictions, even for companies because it is a proposal that allows for a devolution from the contract and the disengagement of 95% of companies".
This, for Bentivogli, “would have a negative impact on companies in greater difficulty and would unload wage tensions where the latter are now faced with company bargaining. All this does not give any guarantee regarding the common goal of linking bargaining and productivity. Furthermore, different contractual (or guarantee) minimums would be configured for each company, useful only to fuel disputes. Fim, Fiom and Uilm do not have identical locations, there are two platforms. Federmeccanica has managed to build the need for a common response, to try to change Federmeccanica's approach, especially on wages”.
"Based on the documents that were presented to us on March 15th - concluded Bentivogli - we will start a process of unitary activities throughout Italy, with a 4-hour strike on April 20th, a strike not to get together, but to renew the contract. A new phase opens, Federmeccanica reflects internally, also because its proposal has become the paradigm of all candidates for the presidency of Confindustria, but if this same proposal does not have the space to become a collective agreement, in its sustainable version, it is destined to remain precisely a marble plaque, not even for future reference".
