One of the key points of the Unicredit's new 2017-2019 strategic plan, presented today to the City, provides for another 6.500 redundancies, of which 3.900 in Italy (of course, including early retirement and voluntary exit agreements). The total reduction in full-time employees will be approximately 14 thousand units in three years, for a saving of 1,1 billion on personnel costs. The news inevitably alarmed the banking unions.
"We will fight to ensure that the declared redundancies, the adequacy of which is yet to be verified, are managed only on a voluntary basis and through our sector social safety net, with the maximum guarantees for the workers concerned - commented Mauro Morelli, national secretary of the Fabi “Any corporate attempts to mandate exits and charge restructuring costs to remaining employees will be resisted harshly.”
Morelli then said that he judged “favorably the reduction in the compensation of the new CEO, Mustier, who personally bet on the new plan. However, we would have expected Unicredit's relaunch strategy to go through a truly innovative reorganization of the network and the enhancement of workers, essential for guaranteeing a future for the group. Instead, once again we are faced with a plan with a strong push towards digital, which risks taking the institute away from a large portion of customers and from the economies of the territories".
Along the same lines Emilio Contrasto, general secretary of Unisin: "The tools that will be identified will have to safeguard the economic and regulatory levels present today within the group and confirm the voluntariness of each initiative aimed at achieving the objectives of the Plan".
For Roberto Vitantonio, Unisin national secretary responsible for Unicredit, "it is unacceptable that Italian workers are still called to sacrifice for an Industrial Plan which provides, among other things, a capital increase of these proportions which, obviously, could dilute, if the current Italian shareholders will not fully participate in the Italian shares in the Bank”.
The national secretary Vitantonio concludes by noting "the concern for a solution, proposed by this management, which takes the form of a further serious reduction in the number of Italian workers quantifiable in 3.700 resources as well as the closure of almost 600 branches in Italy alone".
