Italtel, no layoffs: go to solidarity contracts

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No layoffs in Italtel, but recourse to social safety nets and in particular to the Solidarity Contract, for the duration of 12 months starting from next June 1st and until May 31st 2024, for a maximum of 162 workers out of about 850 people in Italy.

It is the result of the agreement reached between the company and the unions on the restructuring procedure, which started on February 28 and which provided for the dismissal of 123 people in Italy. To confirm it at Only 24 Hours it is the CEO of Italtel himself, Benedetto Di Salvo: «We had a constructive discussion with the social partners and we reached an agreement that allows us to avoid resorting to traumatic tools on a small portion of the population, on specific areas and skills ».

The three offices in Milan, Rome and Palermo will be involved with an overall percentage reduction in working hours for the people involved that will vary between 30% and 85%. “We have identified an alternative tool to dismissal – Di Salvo points out – which allows us to implement our plan for reviewing the workforce and updating skills in a socially responsible manner in line with the provisions of our industrial plan”.

There will also be forms of incentives to leave on a voluntary basis. But within Italtel this agreement is seen as a break from the past, aiming to tackle the business with a change of pace on which collaborations with Its and Universities will be called to impact for the entry of young people and plans reskilling for staff.

All this at the end of a year – the new Italtel exiting the composition procedure started on 1 April 2022 – in which the company also found itself facing new and unforeseen obstacles. Above all the crisis that has affected the parent company PSC (a group 80% controlled by the holding company of the Pesce family, PSC Partecipazioni, and with the rest equally divided between Fincantieri and Simest), a few months after entering the capital. The passage – as mentioned in April a year ago – of the company under the banner of the PSC-Clessidra-Tim consortium (54% for PSC; 28% for the Clessidra Capital Credit fund and 18% for the Tim Group) sanctioned a new course for the historic telecommunications company founded in 1921 by Siemens to produce telephones and which had its heyday in the 80s, under the leadership of Marisa Bellisario, before landing on turbulent years that left a legacy of debt ballast daughter of the leveraged takeover that saw Telecom hand over control to a consortium majority owned by the Dubilier fund.