Employees beat BNL in court: sale to Capgemini “illegitimate”

More than 150 employees will have to be taken back by the employer who had outsourced them as part of a business unit transfer. The company in question is Bnl, the bank that is part of the French group Bnp Paribas and which, in April 2022, had moved 250 computer scientists to the information technology company Capgemini. Of these, 172 filed suit and on 10 July the Rome labor court agreed with them, ordering the bank to restore the previous relationship.

They will go back to being Bnl employees in all respects, even if, almost certainly, they will be seconded to Capgemini at least until mid-December to finish the work they are doing. But that’s not all because another sentence is expected in the coming months, relating to a second sale of a business unit by Bnl: in this case, 400 workers, this time from the back office, have turned to the court , outsourced to AST, an Accenture group company. “We hope that there will be the same outcome on Ast, we are optimistic – comments the head of First Cisl of the Bnl group, Valerio Maurizio Fornasari – also because we believed that the most difficult cause was that relating to Capgemini”.

The unions immediately opposed the operation, never signing the transfer agreement. “We’re talking about people who have been in the BNL for years and who suddenly found themselves in uncertainty. About the future, about protections. And that, in the absence of explanations, he decided to go on his own way. We have asked several times to have some information about the project and the medium-long term strategy, but we have not been listened to; what we have understood is that there is a plan to reduce personnel” explains Fabio Armeni, coordinator of Fabi in Bnl, who adds bitterly: “When the unions and a large company like Bnl cannot reach an agreement and it must be a judge to settle the matter, is always a defeat. For everyone”.

The hope of the unions is that the Bnl-Capgemini case can set a benchmark, becoming a sort of judicial precedent for future outsourcing not shared with the workers and their representatives. “The union does not have a notarial role with respect to unilateral corporate strategies, nor can it acquiesce in choices strongly suspected of illegitimacy. For this reason we have not signed any agreement and we claim the goodness of the choice made” is instead the comment of Tommaso Vigliotti, national secretary of Unisin and secretary responsible for the BNL group.

In a note, Bnl announced that it immediately took action to follow up on the sentence and to evaluate “a possible appeal to support its position”. The agreement with Capgemini, continues Bnl, has the aim of improving the quality of IT services, guaranteeing “effective and timely maintenance and technological development activities” and “the progressive replacement of older applications”.

Now the dialogue with the unions is starting to establish the immediate future of the 156 workers and find “solutions that allow the maintenance of operational continuity at CFT/Capgemini”. A reference to the possibility that employees can continue to stay at Capgemini for at least a few more months. But with a Bnl contract and paycheck.