By 2023 Unicredit will reduce staff by around 6 thousand units and cut 450 branches. The Bank announced it on Monday in a letter sent to the unions for the start of the procedure on the fallout from the new business plan.
"In the national territory, the Team23 plan will allow the implementation of a vast series of measures and the optimization of work processes - reads the text - from the implementation of which will result between 2019 and 2023 an excess of production capacity for about 6 thousand employees and a reduction of the branch network for 450 structures”.
Unicredit specifies that 500 redundancies are "further excess production capacity deriving from the implementation of the actions" of the previous Transform 2019 plan, while 5.500 are new surpluses.
As for the timing of the negotiation, Unicredit would like to close within the first quarter of the year discussions with the social partners "to find shared solutions suitable for mitigating the social effects of the new plan as far as possible".
Some of the redundant workers they will retire if they accrue the right to leave work "by 31 December 2023 (with the right to a pension up to and including 2024 January XNUMX)". For the other outputs it will be used on a priority basis the industry solidarity fund: the Bank "deems it sustainable to refer to the exit of personnel closest to pension entitlement, with an average advance of 36 months with respect to the first pension requirement, adopting exit windows that guarantee the certainty of achieving the reduction objectives".
Finally, as part of the negotiation, "further forms of exodus that allow for the expansion of forms and/or exits" will be examined, such as "quota 100, women's option, purchases of periods not covered by contributions".
La Fabi, the banking union, immediately protested: "Unicredit continues to have an unacceptable attitude - said the general secretary, Lando Maria Sileoni – The managing director Jean Pierre Mustier deludes himself into the illusion that he can give us a sight unseen plan, in fact without discussing the numbers, all of which have already been crystallized in the letter initiating the procedure on the confrontation that we received today”.
To justify the new cuts, Unicredit explains that branch operations fell by 55% compared to 2016 (-20,3 million transactions), while over 12 million transactions were recorded on digital channels in the last 300 months.
In particular, retail deposits at the counter fell by 64%, corporate deposits fell by 70%, while withdrawals fell by 53% in the last twelve months. Lastly, over the counter transfers have fallen by 43% in the last 12 months, against over 100 million transfers arranged via remote channels.
