Welcome!

Good afternoon to all of you! It is very nice to be back together after the Belgrade Plenary and to see some new faces. In particular, I would like to give a warm welcome to Monica Carta, Head of International Social Dialogue for the Unicredit group. 

Jens Thau will join us later this evening in his double capacity of President of the Banking Committee for European Social Affairs of the European Banking Federation and of Representative of the German Banking Association. 

During the Round Table of Friday morning, we will also be joined by Emanuele Recchia and Patrizia Ordasso, Heads of Industrial Relations for Unicredit and Intesa SanPaolo respectively.

The participation of several highly qualified social partners and employers’ representatives from our sector bears testament to the importance and usefulness of what we are trying to do through this European Project. It is also a distinctive trait of our Second Plenary, which I am going to talk about later in my speech.

I would also like to give a warm welcome to the trade union representatives who either were not able to join us last time or who participate for the first time in our Project: Elena Cherubini, member of the Secretariat of the Central Coordination Unit for Fisac-Cgil in Intesa SanPaolo; Bianca Cuciniello from the Groupama EWC Secretariat; Meral Gunenc from the National Secretariat of Basisen, the Turkish trade union of the financial sector (with whom we have been good friends for 25 years already); Ana Herranz from the National Secretariat of Servicios CcOo; Agostino Megale, President of the research institute ISRF LAB of Fisac-Cgil and former Secretary-General of Fisac-Cgil; Marcello Carcereri from the Santander EWC; and Stefano Di Dio. 

I do not intend to illustrate the stages of the Project up to now, as I think that Roberto Errico and Stefano Di Dio will give you a systematic and comprehensive overview.

Employment perspectives in the 4.0 change

I would like to focus on a couple of central elements for this Project. First, the Project was elaborated with the idea in mind that industry 4.0 change can be seen both as a problem – a very serious one in some regards – and as an opportunity for positive developments. The key point is to understand to which extent it is a problem and to which extent it is an opportunity.

Very schematically, the issue for us is to quantify the number of jobs which have already been lost and which will be lost in our sector in the next 5 years. 

Furthermore, we have to disaggregate the overall figure to analyse more specific elements: the number of jobs lost in the various segments of the banking production cycle; the workforce segments who have been and who will be most affected by the digitization trend; the organization of banks across different geographical regions; and disintermediation – all this in a phase in which work productivity in banks is increasing and can only increase through job cuts. 

But is that really so? 

We believe that this is not true. 

We actually believe that changes in work organization also bring about some interesting opportunities, which trade unions must be able to grasp, examine and organize. 

A new segment of 4.0 workforce

I am referring to the workforce segments that, thanks to innovation, can now combine skills and productivity with a relative independence in the management of working hours and of ways to reach production targets (which they certainly cannot decide on their own, but which are imposed on them). 

In this situation, the borders between the typical employee and the self-employed are blurred. 

New forms of flexibility emerge in which, in my opinion, the subjective, individual dimension of employees plays a key role (especially for women). 

Their age, determination to experiment something new and to pursue professional growth and an increased remuneration (with a significant – even if not decisive – variable portion) are important factors. 

Equally important are their relational skills, as they are asked to build trust with clients. This trust is constantly tested in the light of the results obtained by clients through their investments. And an important aspect is that clients trust the person representing the bank even more than the bank where this person works.

In this Project we decided to focus on these new professional figures, also to promote (and I am saying it explicitly) a best practice in terms of negotiations with management, i.e. the internal Agreement of Intesa SanPaolo. The Agreement was presented by our colleagues from the unitary trade union representation of Intesa SanPaolo during the Belgrade Plenary last June.

But our focus is more on trade unions as a negotiating party than on the training needs of union representatives, who must be able to organize and effectively represent this innovative, highly-skilled segment of the banking workforce. 

In this regard, during this event I will repeatedly remind you that, in view of the March 2020 deadline, in your capacity of EWC representatives, you will have to select a worker to accompany you to Rome on the third weekend of March. On that occasion, we will be glad to listen directly to their stories and experience at work in the 4.0 era.

I am aware that this may not be an easy task. However, I am confident that, thanks to your experience and network of links with trade union affiliates, you will be able to find someone willing to come to Rome for a couple of days on a weekend (without necessarily having to take leave) and to tell us about their experience. Their input will give us some food for thought and some valuable elements for our work. Of course, in accordance with our budget rules, we will bear all the costs arising from their participation, i.e. travel, accommodation and interpreting (only between English and Italian).

I will repeat this request also in the coming days.

The employers’ reps’ participation in our Project

I am also aware that some of you may be thinking that I am repeating several things, such as the distinction between obsolescent workforce and a more forward-looking workforce…While this may be true, the key point at this stage of the Project is not only to raise these issues among union officers, but to discuss them with our social partners, i.e. the representatives of transnational groups and European employers’ associations. 

This is something that should be added to the information and consultation procedures we have at a group and at a European level and to the topics discussed in the framework of industry-wide social dialogue.

After the meetings we organized in Sofia last April and in Belgrade last June, this is the first time that we have employers’ representatives with us (with some of them we have already had a fruitful exchange for many years). Let us try to have a conversation on the management of changes in work organization and on European legislation (Directives on employee involvement).

These are two different, yet intertwined levels that must be combined together. It is indeed only through an effective, joint implementation by the social partners of the European legislation we are discussing that we can govern change, adapt to the speed of change and – to a certain extent and for some strategic aspects – anticipate it.

Capitalism to be reformed?

A few days ago, Corrado Passera took an interview in which he argued that capitalism must imperatively change to better protect and promote the common good and abandon neoliberalism once and for all. Failure to do so would lead to worse disasters than the ones we experienced in the past decade. Corrado Passera also pointed the finger at the growing and unbearable inequalities and irrational concentration of wealth and power which the free market – if seen as an absolute – and politics – if they support it and become subordinate to it – have brought about.

I am quoting him not only because he was a very important manager and entrepreneur in our sector, but also because I think that his is a very useful, concrete and not at all ideological approach. In this regard, I think that our Project – albeit on a small scale – will provide some valuable arguments. 

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing implosion of the Soviet Union, on the one hand, I think that we all agree that it would be foolish to go back to the juxtaposition of social and economic models (today, I believe that, while we need to distance ourselves from real socialism, the analysis of Karl Marx deserves to be rediscovered). 

On the other hand, it is also evident that the ideological and propagandistic infatuation with deregulation and the free market has actually led the whole world to an oligopolistic and monopolistic concentration. This concentration has not only reduced the income and rights of an increasing share of workers, but it is also gradually destroying freedom of enterprise and free competition, i.e. the founding values of capitalism which the current economic and political developments are increasingly and concretely threatening.

Therefore, as social partners we must discuss industry 4.0 changes and find joint instruments, negotiation and legislation tools at a European level to try to govern the impact of change and control its direction. We must also encourage MEPs to propose a reform of the European Directives on employee involvement. To this purpose, we are going to carry out our own fitness check, so as to contribute to the fitness check recently launched by the European Commission. We may also be openly critical, if we conclude that Professor Dorssemont is right to warn us that the fitness check is actually a way to propose deregulation and to dismantle the Directives. According to him, if the fitness check demonstrates that the Directives are not as effective as expected, the European Commission will simply try to drastically simplify them and to abolish some of their provisions.

We will make our contribution during the Round Table on Friday morning, but tomorrow we will already start to work in that direction. We will have speeches by Monica Carta and Jens Thau. They will be followed by the lecture of Filip Dorssemont, who unfortunately will not be here with us, but connected from the University where he works. Nonetheless, I am confident that his lecture will be just as effective as if he was here in person. 

Tomorrow afternoon we will have an exchange of views on Professor Dorssemont’s lecture (by the way, you have already received an email with a draft version of his lecture, with the main points he will address). He will continue to follow us remotely during our open discussion. This will be the first opportunity for us to work together on reform proposals we may agree on with our social partners. We will then have other opportunities for a more in-depth discussion as we approach the conclusive Plenary of the Project in June 2020.

Today, in the afternoon, we will take stock of our progress in the Project. After my speech, we will not just check the materials and documentation we have collected so far. We certainly have an impressive amount of high-quality data, presentations, studies and speeches on the Drive folder of our Project. However, all this material should be fit for use and be used by all of you. Today, we will also check if this the case and we will try to fix any flaws and take any other necessary measures to favour usage of the documentation.

This check will be followed by the speeches of Roberto Errico and Stefano Di Dio on the state of the art of the Project and its immediate prospects.

Today we will also briefly talk about an item we had on the agenda in Belgrade, but which we did not have time to discuss. We will talk about the role of trade unions in EWCs according to the combined provisions of Directive 2009/38 and national legislations on company-level workers’ representation in the 4 countries where the 8 groups involved in the Project are based. This presentation will integrate the training/legal part of our Project with some elements drawn from the concrete experience of trade unions.

We will also be glad to listen to Meral’s presentation about Turkey, which will complete the round of presentations we had in Belgrade (where no one from Basisen was able to attend) about the new EU Member States and Candidate Countries.

Before the conclusions of Claudio Cornelli, National Secretary of Fisac-Cgil in charge of International Affairs, we will have an update on the EWCs – and more in general the transnational groups – represented here by the union officers who chair and/or coordinate them. We will start later this afternoon with Credit Agricole, Société Générale and Bnp-Paribas and we will continue with the others tomorrow morning.

The goal of having this item on the agenda is to constantly stay up-to-date on the priorities and changes occurring in the transnational groups represented here. This is necessary in order to better coordinate our actions in the framework of the Project on the basis of our experience on the ground.

Mario Ongaro • Project Manager