Sky Italia, voluntary exits or reconversion for 800 workers – Corriere.it

Sky Italia has presented the efficiency plan to the unions which foresees an impact on 800 additional resources, including internal and external workers, which add up to the 400 job positions already foreseen in the agreement signed with the social partners in 2021. Workers will be asked to choose between an incentivized voluntary exit, up to the capacity of the budget allocated by the company, and a professional reconversion towards the activities that will be re-internalized. Both the Slc-Cgil, Fistel-Cisl and Uilcom-Uil unions and the company gave the news after a meeting between them and the CEO of Sky Italia, Andrea Duilio who presented them with the 2024-2025 plan. A reorganization involving 800 internal and external workers is expected, in addition to the previous 400 only internal workers out of a workforce of 4,000 people.

In the company note – which highlights how the extension of the plan to a further 800 people was necessary following a particularly difficult year due to the deterioration of the macroeconomic context – there is talk of professional retraining to be developed together with the trade union organizations which responds to the need to redefine the processes and the organizational structure, including that of internal customer care and which also provides for a large insourcing of activities in various areas, including those of technical support for IT systems, post-production and production activities , and support to the active cycle. According to the unions, however, a reorganization of this magnitude represents an element that could become disruptive if the tools put in place were not used effectively. And they warn: We will negotiate every single situation, with particular attention to the re-internalisation and reskilling processes of all the personnel involved, to verify that it is actually a concrete path, and not a simple attempt to gain some time before more drastic solutions.

The will is to resolve the critical issue in time as happened previously and focusing on training to retrain the staff. In Sky for several years, starting from advance negotiation, we have managed to govern a non-traumatic management of many critical situations, starting above all from concept of the retraining of workers facing a phase of profound technological change. For us there is no room, in this company as in the rest of the sector, for different choices compared to what has been done up to now, they add.

On the other hand, workers’ representatives point out, the sector is facing a structural crisis, exacerbated by the entry into the field of streaming platforms, whose economies of scale, combined with economic strength and the almost total absence of cost of work in our country, are putting a strain on the existence of traditional broadcasters. It is a crisis which, in the absence of a regulatory intervention capable of rebalancing the competitive advantage snatched from streaming platforms, risks bringing the entire sector to its knees, at least judging by the increasingly unbalanced trend of advertising revenues – concludes the note — in favor of OTTs.

The company, however, reassures: professional retraining and insourcing will allow Sky to accelerate the transformation process already agreed with the social partners starting from 2021, at the same time offering workers a concrete and valuable opportunity, equipping them with new skills in professional fields that have a safer future. The reskilling plan aims to equip the company with the skills necessary to be competitive in a market that is growing mainly in streaming and in which competition is increasingly with international media players that have streamlined corporate structures and business models and data driven.