Roberto Benaglia is the new General Secretary of the Fim Cisl, he succeeds Marco Bentivogli at the head of the metalworkers of the Cisl.
Benaglia, 59, was elected in Rome by the general council of the SIM with a very large majority. Trade unionist with a long experience, he arrives at the Fim after various territorial and national assignments starting from the early 80s, from 1998 until 2008 he is first in the secretariat and then at the helm of the Fim Cisl Lombardia.
Between 2008 and 2016 he was a member of the Cisl regional secretariat in Lombardy with assignments on labor market and bargaining issues. Between 2016 and 2019 he became an operator of the confederal Cisl always on the issues of contractual policies, until arriving in May 2019 in the national secretariat of Fai Cisl where he followed contract renewals and union relations in the food industry and with the main groups of the same.
"My first thought as secretary general of the Fim Cisl - Benagli said immediately after the election - is addressed to too many metalworkers today on layoffs and to the many young people with fixed-term contracts who have already been left at home". In addition to the customary thanks to his predecessor Marco Bentivogli "for the innovative leadership work he has been able to carry out in recent years and for having supported my candidacy", the new secretary immediately proposed a meeting with Fiom and Uil for the mass with common proposals and perspectives. "Prolonging the shock absorbers and blocking layoffs is essential, but this time should be used to adopt new tools to support investment and employment," he said.
The other pillar will be bargaining which “cannot go into layoffs. In these months of the pandemic, trade unions and companies have worked hard together to guarantee work in safety, production flexibility, agile work management and shock absorbers. Even at the national level, more negotiation is needed today, including innovative ones, starting from the table for the renewal of the CCNL on which we want to continue to be present from the next appointments with the capacity for dialogue, proposal and comparison".
The promise is that Fim will continue to be "a trade union placed on the frontier of the changes that work is increasingly experiencing" and attentive to the new protections in terms of training, active policies, professionalism, work for objectives, contractual welfare, work-life balance and wage policies that metalworkers increasingly need.
