Bankers ask for 435 euros more per month (and half an hour less work per day)

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Of Rita Querze
The platform of the banking unions for the renewal of the contract is ready. The category is serious: for employees of the third professional area with the fourth level of contributions who today earn 2,956 euros gross, they ask for an increase of 435 euros: 14.5% more. All within the three-year term of the contract. Sure, the flame of inflation should subside from here on out… But the bankers don’t want to hear any “ifs” or “buts”. “We must recover the lost purchasing power, but that’s not all, we must also take into account the increases in productivity that have been ensured in recent years and which have allowed the banks to record profits. Now the wealth must be redistributed”.

Smart working

Of course, it would be limiting to reduce the entire platform to a paycheck issue. Several of the requests from Fabi, First Cisl, Fisac ​​Cgil, Unisin, Uilca actually concern working hours and organization. Let’s take smart working that is so coveted in many sectors. Bankers are and remain wary. The contract in force today sets a limit of 10 days per month. Which the platform has no intention of giving up. Also because the bankers fear that smart working is the Trojan horse to unhook some sectors from the main structures of the groups, then gradually coming to justify a change of contract for these workers. “We are thinking of stricter regulation of smart working to avoid professional penalties and uncontrolled outsourcing”, say the unions. But in reality they also have another problem, entirely internal: the employees of the sector are divided between those who are at the counter and cannot work from home and those who could potentially always work from the desk in the living room. Obviously those to whom smart working is precluded feel penalized compared to the others. Last but even more important: the banking platform opposes the idea of ​​smart working evaluated on the basis of the result and not on the basis of the time dedicated to the work itself: “Remote work cannot constitute a different way of measuring of the performance”. In other words: as long as it comes to negotiating the timetable there is a reference parameter that is easy to evaluate, venturing on the results could be risky.

Short week

Then there’s the whole open question of the four-day week. Here Intesa Sanpaolo went ahead by proposing individual agreements to workers which provide for weeks of four days with a schedule of 9 hours a day (in which the lunch break is not counted). The union did not want to sign any agreement, also in order not to create precedents that could compromise the new contract on this matter. Certainly the working hours will be the subject of comparison. It is no coincidence that the unions are asking to go from 37.5 to 35 hours a week, reducing working hours by half an hour every day.

Contractual perimeter

From the platform, the fear that the scope of application of the contract is gradually reduced due to digitization is evident. Consequently, it is requested that telephone banking and electronic banking be excluded from the contractable activities. And at the same time assurances on the application of the bank contract to any areas that are internalised.

Algorithms

The bankers are asking for “the union’s right to request and obtain detailed corporate information relating to the use of male and female workers’ personal data and to be involved in prior knowledge of the construction criteria for data management algorithms and to verify management results and effects on employees”.

Industrial Relations

Intesa Sanpaolo last February 27, while remaining in the ABI, the association of Italian banks, decided not to be represented by the ABI itself at the negotiating table for the renewal of the national contract, in which it will in any case take part. Now it will be interesting to understand how the platform will be implemented by the ABI but also by the largest Italian bank.