Rome 2020 Report

Report the project path from the latest meeting of the steering group of 7-8 october 2020 towards the final conference.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Our proposal for a revision of the EWC Directive 2009/38 amidst the growing digitalization of processes and the redistribution of workforce
• The impact of the COVID-19 emergency on the timeline, implementation modes and topics of the Project
• The acceleration of change due to COVID-19 and organizational issues for trade unions
• The speed of change:  
  • 1) for a permanent collective bargaining, in a different balance between national bargaining and bargaining within transnational groups

Levels of bargaining amidst changes in work organization

• The speed of change:
  • 2) organizing and representing the 4.0 workforce
  • 3) the fitness check of the EU Directives on employee involvement
• Update on our proposals for the revision of EU Directives on employee involvement: the 13 proposals and the 4 key points
• Overview of developments within the EWCs and within the Intesa Sanpaolo group
• The experiences of two workers representative of industry 4.0 change and of their direct trade union representatives
• The stories we heard on 7 October 2020 and the analysis of the questionnaires filled out by a sample of workers of the 4.0 segment
• Our dialogue with management representatives

Our proposal for a revision of the EWC Directive

We resumed the collective discussion and analysis when the Steering Group of the European Project FISAC 2019/0016 met on 7-8 October 2020. Two types of stakeholders took part in this fourth event: 

workers representative of the 4.0 segment of the banking workforce, together with their direct trade union representatives;

management representatives of the European banking industry.

I will get back to the role which the two stakeholders had in this meeting – and in the Project in general – shortly.

Now let’s go back to what we had discussed during our latest Plenary (i.e. the third stage of the Project) on 13-14-15 November 2019. The fourth meeting was originally scheduled for last March, but the COVID-19 emergency forced us to delay it for more than six months.

However, the COVID-19 emergency also led the EU to launch the Recovery Plan. Therefore, our Project was also revised in order to incorporate new, fundamental elements.

Below is the proposal which Agostino Megale and I had drawn up and summarized in 4 key points:

THE 4 KEY POINTS OF THE FISAC-CGIL PROPOSAL FOR A JOINT DOCUMENT BY SOCIAL PARTNERS

by Agostino Megale and Mario Ongaro

1. The European Works Council must have the right to be informed in advance of the impact which each Business Plan (including any digital innovation processes) of the transnational group will have on workers.
2. Information must be provided in particular on the potential quantitative and qualitative effects on jobs, work organization, smart working, working hours, including the changes deriving from the digital innovation of processes and products.
3. Information must be provided once the draft Business Plan has been drawn up, but well before it is officially made public, without prejudice to confidentiality clauses namely for the information potentially impacting on markets, notwithstanding the employees’ reps duties of communication.
4. This kind of procedure must allow European Works Councils to be consulted in good time on the impact of Business Plans and process innovations. It must also allow them to draw up a Social Plan to govern changes that may affect workers and generate redundancies. For instance, in this case the priority could be given to voluntary redundancies and measures could be taken to retrain and reinstate the affected workers.

Our 4 key points are combined with the 13 proposals by Professor Filip Dorssemont of the University of Louvain, the expert in European labour law who has collaborated with us during our Project. These 13 proposals concern the possible revision of not only EU Directive 2009/38, but also all the other Directives on employee involvement.

I have dedicated a specific chapter of this Report to the comparison and integration of the 4 key points and of the 13 proposals.

However, I would like to stress that it is necessary to link both the key points and the proposals to the EU Recovery Plan and, more precisely, to its part on investments in digitalization.

We will have the opportunity to discuss this point more in detail, but one thing is for sure:

the impact of digitalization on work organization, on the relocation of workers, on their productivity and on their training needs – brought about by the new organization of work – is a core issue for our European Project and for its legal foundations.

From this point of view, it is now imperative to include in the concept and practices of employee involvement the plans of transnational groups which involve investments in digitalization thanks to the resources which will be made available through the Recovery Plan.

We are facing something completely new in terms of resources available to fund digital innovation for a sustainable economy. Through the pooling of the debt, public resources of a scale that could hardly be imagined only few months ago will stimulate corporate restructuring processes at the transnational level. 

With respect to these restructuring processes and to the identification of the effects on workers of the digital investments made possible by the Recovery Plan, it is now a priority to truly involve workers’ representatives to anticipate change.  

The very specific and relevant topic of employee involvement and participation is something we need to discuss in depth in the next weeks and months, together with the trade unions and employers’ associations that are actively participating in this European Project FISAC-CGIL 2019-0016.

I would like to stress one specific element which has already been addressed by European Social Dialogue in the Banking sector and by the most recent Joint Statements issued as a result of Social Dialogue.

I am referring to the increases in work productivity which digitalization has brought about and will bring about. These have been made possible by the job cuts linked to digitalization, but also by the implementation of new procedures and by the physical relocation of individual workers.

There are at least three ways in which, in our opinion, a sizable part of these productivity increases should be invested:

• limiting job cuts, including the ones due to the pandemic
• retraining workers who would hardly be redeployed
• protecting the purchasing power of workers, in particular the ones directly affected by productivity increases

These are three recommendations that we make to trade unions and employers’ associations, as we prepare to work together for the drawing up of joint proposals to the European Commission. To submit them, we can rely on the key support of our allies in the European Parliament, starting from Brando Benifei, with whom we have collaborated fruitfully for a long time.

The impact of the COVID-19 emergency on the timeline, implementation modes and topics of the Project

We had originally agreed with the European Commission for this project to last 20 months, from March 2019 to October 2020. This was in line with the average duration of similar projects with comparable objectives.

The COVID-19 emergency forced us to postpone the fourth and fifth events (the second meeting of the Steering Committee and the Final Conference). The fourth event was postponed from March 2020 – when the emergency was most serious – to October 2020, when we were lucky enough to benefit from the last days before the current lockdown. 

The Final Conference was originally scheduled for last June, but it should now take place by the end of February. We still do not know to which extent it will be possible to hold it in person, since we have a potential audience of about 60 people from 16 different countries (at the moment it is currently not possible to travel to Italy from some of them, except under the condition of an impractical quarantine).

I would like to point out that since our latest Plenary, which took place as planned in November 2019, we have certainly had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 emergency. Yet, we have never stopped working. Proof of this is, among other things, that the DG Employment proposed last March that we formally ask for an extension of the Contract which FISAC-CGIL had signed with them. This is what we did, as we postponed the deadline by 5 months, i.e. from 31 October 2020 to 31 March 2021.

At the meeting of 7-8 October not all eight transnational groups participating in the Project were represented. Indeed, it is difficult to maintain continuity of participation for a Project which was submitted to the European Commission on 2 May 2018, which formally started on 1 March 2019, and whose original duration was extended from 20 to 25 months due to the COVID-19 emergency. This means it has been more than two years since the formal start of the Project activities, and almost three years since its submission to the European Commission. Indeed, the time it takes from the submission to the approval and to the payment of the first tranche of funds by the Commission is almost one year. 

Based on my experience, I can say that it is really difficult to keep people engaged for such a long time. However, the fact that 5 in 8 groups were formally represented in this meeting was already a success.

This kind of situation was impossible to predict even less than one year ago. But a Project on changes in work and their considerable impact on work organization must necessarily try to understand what effects the COVID-19 emergency has on work organization and the workers of the finance industry. I am not saying that we should deviate from the original purpose of our Project, but that we should briefly integrate this unexpected issue into it.

Let’s first clarify some key points: 

remote work is not smart working, it is telework. Let’s be clear. We cannot use the expression “smart working” for someone working from home. Smart working may also include working from home, but the two things should not be confused. Let’s not oversimplify the situation.

Smart working and the changes in work organization addressed in our Project are something much more complex. As our guests will tell us, there is no longer a fixed, specific place where bank workers arrive every morning at a certain time. They no longer have lunch break at a certain time and they no longer go home at a certain time – unless they work overtime. 

There is no longer a fixed workplace, nor fixed working hours. Employees now also work from home, but they mostly work wherever they are needed, for instance at the client’s office or somewhere else.

With respect to this difference from telework, in his speech Angelo Di Cristo, Head of UNI Finance, correctly underlined that telework is regulated by a series of existing agreements, among which the ones signed by UNI Finance and by the European employers’ associations of the banking and insurance sectors. With the COVID-19 emergency, there has been a strong acceleration in the spreading of work from home, but collective bargaining is struggling to keep up with this acceleration. 

In the final speech of the first day, Claudio Cornelli expressed similar ideas. This concept was also confirmed by the results of the questionnaires filled in by the workers of the 4.0 segment. These results were presented by Roberto Errico and Nicola Cicala in October. The sudden and sweeping changes in work organization brought about by the pandemic have generated a significant increase in work productivity and decrease in “operational” costs. This has convinced even the companies which until February 2020 had most resisted smart working to adopt it. 

The trade unions have not been caught unprepared, also at an international level. A good example is the Agreement on the COVID-19 emergency, or, to be more precise, the Joint Statement which was signed in late March 2020 by the social partners of the finance industry in the framework of European Social Dialogue in our sector (see annexes to this Report).

However, there is still a lot to negotiate, in particular on two issues:

• the workers’ right to disconnect at predetermined times and days;
• the workers’ right to receive from their employers all the tools, equipment and material needed to work from home, without using the workers’ personal equipment.

With respect to these two rights, I see an indirect yet substantial connection with the experience of Finance Watch mentioned by Claudio Cornelli. To be sustainable and adequately regulated, the finance industry should ensure the protection of savers, the corporate responsibility of financial investments, and the full implementation of workers’ rights and guarantees.

Angelo Di Cristo underlined a peculiar element, something which had already begun to emerge and was further accelerated by the pandemic: the growing superfluity of a significant part of the real estate assets of banks as a side effect of the increasing digitalization and of work from home.

This confirms a concept of Marxist theory which I had already mentioned during one of the first meetings of this European Project back in 2019: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as a result of the increase in the organic composition of capital. In this regard, I would like to quote an excerpt of my introduction to the Plenary we organized in Belgrade in June 2019:

In my opinion there is an underlying trend to the speed of change, which is pushed by the digitization of the production process of banking and financial services.

To understand this trend, it is helpful to make reference to the old and bearded Karl Marx, who – in this respect and in many others – proves to be more modern than many presumed modern economists and sociologists.

I am thinking about the rapidity of rotation of working capital, i.e. the money out of which banks must be able to make a profit as quickly as possible. At the same time, they also need to dispose of growing shares of fixed capital, fixed assets like facilities, buildings, obsolescent machinery, offices and branches. These fixed assets have an impact on what Marx called the organic composition of capital and they lead to the tendency of the rate of profit (in this case for the bank) to fall.

After all, what is the open, smart branch about? What is the process of divestment and sale of huge real estate assets about? It is just about banks getting rid of costly fixed assets for years, albeit with mixed results.

And, after all, what is digitization about? It is about the possibility of offering banking services with the least possible amount of fixed assets, using working capital and making it rotate more and more quickly.

This whirlwind and radical reorganization of the production cycle in banks is pushed by the need to radically change what Marx called the organic composition of capital and to increase the rate of profit in two ways:

 

first, the aforementioned drastic reduction in fixed capital, together with the exponential growth of the rapidity of rotation of working capital;

 

second, the strong increase in work productivity through quality improvement and the readiness of workers to accept different working hours, schedules and targets. This acceptance is then rewarded through increased independence, less hierarchy, more opportunities of professional growth and pay rises.

With this self-quotation I anticipated part of the considerations we made during our latest meeting in October. Another key concept was expressed by Claudio Cornelli and by Angelo Di Cristo: UNI works to export the rights of workers and trade unions to the countries where they are insufficient and where companies have relocated major segments of their production cycles precisely to exploit these insufficiencies.

In fact, employers have sent us a message that seems to agree to a significant extent with our critical approach.

As correctly pointed out by Monica Carta on behalf of the management of the Unicredit Group, the COVID-19 emergency has further accelerated the processes which, in the competitive context and in the world of work, are rapidly redefining roles and responsibilities, probably as never before. This emergency has also led to a rapid reskilling and upskilling in digitalization of large groups of the population. (…) Internalizing change requires time. Employers and trade unions can act through advanced social dialogue to enhance the human capital and in order for workers to actively contribute to the company’s success and to their own professional growth also in the new post-pandemic scenario.

Advanced social dialogue must set itself the goal of qualitatively improving the daily experience of workers and of defining a set of rules to manage change in the interest of workers, of undertakings, and ultimately of society.

This approach is quite in line with what Agostino Megale said in his speech on 7 October. He drew our attention to the co-determination rights in Germany and France. He also explicitly stressed the need to implement at long last art. 46 of the Italian Constitution and to also overcome the age-old reservations of trade unions. Agostino stressed that the economic, healthcare and social conditions of Europe can generate change in this regard.

For this reason, it is necessary to carefully monitor also the forms of work that have become more common during the COVID-19 emergency, such as working from home and smart working. When they were first introduced, the many difficulties led to regulating them. However, we may now find out that the majority of workers see this evolution positively. Now that digital innovation helps us go beyond the traditional concepts of time and space, workers may see this change as a sort of liberation from the constraints of working in an office, bank branch, workplace. However, as we know, every evolution of work can be a liberation only if it does not become a prison. And it becomes a prison when there are no rules. In every European country, in a branch or office, work ends at a certain time. This is what we call “disconnection”: it is a right, but also a duty which must be recognized at a national and at a European level.  

Acceleration of change because of the COVID-19 emergency and organizational issues for trade unions

The COVID-19 emergency has certainly accelerated a number of processes and it may have made some of them irreversible. 

A definitive change may be the permanent adoption of remote work for at least part of an employee’s working hours. This is something we should think about carefully. On the one hand, remote work ensures more flexibility in the organization of working hours and shifts, and it can help meet some specific needs. On the other hand, I think it is also a major reason for concern for trade unions.

The fact that the workers represented by trade unions are no longer concentrated in a specific, physical place is a major problem for trade unions. In my opinion, unions do not know how to handle this issue and they are trying to do so as best as they can. 

In this regard, Agostino said:

Trade unions very often approach innovation with the fear generated by change. Fear is a dominant aspect of modern societies. Very often, it leads to reactionary or right-wing political positions. It is indeed difficult to deal with fear, whereas it is easier to respond with superficial statements that appeal to people’s gut feelings. It is difficult to integrate an immigrant arriving to your country, while it is simpler to use racist slogans that are more easily understandable. But difficulties are the ones that solve problems. Simplifications respond to fears, but without solving them. Regaining a positive idea of politics and union action requires the willingness and courage to address complexity. Every time we are dealing with a complex situation and we have to send a difficult message, we as trade unionists shall behave responsibly, tenaciously, seriously and rigorously, in line with the values that have pushed us to serve other workers and not to pursue our own interests.

These democratic processes strengthen the role of union leaders. We and you are here to serve workers. We should not be afraid of digital innovation. We cannot underestimate it, but we cannot be afraid of it. We must be willing to govern change and be aware that, through our knowledge and through the democratic participation processes existing within undertakings, we can and must do more.

The digital challenge is maybe the most important challenge of the last 30-40 years. Its characteristics are unprecedented. Yet, if we analyze the history of trade unions, we see that labour agreements and industrial relations have evolved in connection with technological changes. 

The speed of change: for a permanent collective bargaining, in a different balance between national bargaining and bargaining within transnational groups

Agostino Megale did not join the plethora of people who, faced with the contradictions, lack of discipline, and slowness of European liberal democracies, praised the supposed efficiency of public health management in authoritarian regimes like China (which is, whether we like it or not, where the pandemic started, as unfortunately only right-wing parties remind us). 

Agostino emphasized “(…) the extremely close connection between democracy and self-government and the responsible choices of individuals. Constraints can certainly be imposed, but if individuals are engaged to act responsibly and to personally contribute to the protection of their health, democracy wins over any kind of authoritarian rule.

This is essential, because there is no preordained destiny according to which democracy loses and authoritarianism wins. This is also relevant to our discussion in the smaller context of our Project. We are neither thinking about Socialism nor about the self-government of workers. But we certainly want to advance and strengthen democratic processes, for what we may call an evolution of capitalism from the aggressive pursuit of profit to a form of capitalism mitigated by the democracy of workers’ participation.”

Trade unions – in particular union representatives that are most in direct contact with workers – need permanent collective bargaining in order to keep up with the speed of change. During our two-day event in October, this idea helped establish a direct link between Agostino Megale’s speech and the analysis of sociologist Piero Valentini (see annexes to this Report for his complete presentation). Figure 3 of his analysis clearly shows the connection between continuous restructuring and processes of continuous competitive digital innovation, which is also strongly driven by Fintech companies.

In this regard, Agostino pointed out that “(…) in the early Nineties, while discussing the changes of the third industrial revolution, Bruno Trentin, the then Secretary-General of CGIL, mentioned the connection between collective bargaining and the bargaining timeframe. At the time, there were national collective bargaining agreements and group-wide agreements that lasted two or three years, depending on the situations. Back then, we already argued that, in order to regulate changes and work organization, collective bargaining cannot be limited in time. Instead, there should be an almost permanent collective bargaining, because changes and technological production occur on a constant, continuous basis. And I would argue that digital innovation completes in space and time this concept, because, after all, we are dealing with continuous and permanent innovation.”

LEVELS OF BARGAINING AMIDST CHANGES IN WORK ORGANIZATION

For this project we involved 8 transnational groups, namely 7 banking groups and 1 insurance group: Intesa Sanpaolo, Unicredit Group, Credit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Santander, Groupama.

Why did we involve union representatives within companies rather than national trade unions? 

Because those who are bargaining within undertakings and managing industrial relations are on the frontline dealing with change and its effects. 

Therefore, union representatives within companies and transnational groups must be able to make preliminary assessments and elaborate first responses.

In this regard, I think it is inevitable to ask ourselves how to strike a balance between a national collective bargaining agreement and company-level agreements. 

I want to speak openly and invite all of us to reflect on and examine real data and situations. 

In order to try to anticipate change, I think it is fair to say that the only way to do it quickly enough is company- or group-level bargaining. This should be combined with and, if necessary, mediated through instruments of co-determination, participation and surveillance of corporate decisions. However, these instruments are not (yet) available in most countries, so I will limit myself to bargaining.

The latter should not be opposed to industry-wide collective bargaining, which plays – and should continue to play – a “universal” (albeit national and not transnational) role. However, we should take into account that a transnational group acts on a larger dimension, taking international financial and labour markets into consideration. Within its limited scope, the national collective bargaining approach of the last decades can hardly respond to these wider challenges.

When I speak of labour markets, I am thinking about workers that are hired or dismissed, salaries that are increased, kept the same or cut, working hours that need to be organized or even reduced. Let’s even assume that working hours must be reduced: in this case, should we keep salaries stable? 

In order to keep salaries stable with fewer working hours, it is either necessary to increase productivity, or – to put it plain – someone must provide the money needed to cover the higher labour cost per hour which is inevitably generated by a reduction in working hours. 

Who can provide this money?

The State, through general taxation, i.e. by further increasing an already very high tax burden? 

Or should it be the European Union, through instruments which would have to be agreed upon and organized together? 

We must absolutely find an answer to these questions. Either we increase productivity, or we find a way to fill the salary gap between reduced working hours and full remuneration. If trade unions intend to propose a reduction in working hours, I think they should also come up with an answer to this issue.

Of course, the employment dynamics are different across the various countries.

CGIL (my trade union) has reaffirmed its determination to defend national industry-wide collective bargaining agreements. In my opinion, CGIL and, in general, all Italian trade unions should reflect carefully on this aspect. Fine, let’s defend national agreements. But if the proposal stops here, as a member of CGIL, I must say that I am not fully convinced. Especially if trade unions put forward another huge priority, i.e. a substantial, across-the-board salary increase. How can we reconcile this priority with an equally across-the-board reduction in working hours in the framework of national collective bargaining? Once again and once more, I believe this leads us back to the core, real priority: productivity.

Agostino Megale: on national, company- and group-wide collective bargaining

Mario has made some good points concerning the levels of collective bargaining and their effectiveness. However, I believe it is necessary to go more in depth to clarify some aspects.

First, while there are national collective bargaining agreements and group-wide agreements, we cannot ignore the evolution of undertakings at a supranational level. When national agreements are negotiated, the European dimension is ignored. Yet, the European dimension has acquired a major role in the last decades. In the past we already discussed the idea of having European collective agreements. The extent of the single currency does not make it possible to negotiate salaries at the European level. As a result, in the European context we can only discuss the possibility of a mandatory minimum salary or of general guidelines. But, if we go back to the initial idea of European collective agreements, I think that never before has a sector been as centralized at the European level as the banking industry – and in part the insurance industry as well.

During the crises we even talked about bail-ins, bail-outs, and decisions to be taken during the weekend – when markets are closed – which have immediate consequences. This is something that does not happen in the textile, shoe-making or chemical sector. In the banking industry, the European dimension is more decisive than in any other sector.

To deal with this evolution, we cannot envisage a large, European contract, which is only possible in theory and actually impractical. We cannot even deal with it through European Directives and rules. As Angelo Di Cristo, Head of UNI Finance, knows very well, what we need is a strong, very strong European trade union.

Within transnational groups, there is a tendency across countries to underestimate the role of European trade unionism.

Whether we like it or not, our future lies in this dimension more than in the national one. In the future, the real centre of gravity in the world of work will be in the workplaces – hence the direct representative bodies of workers – and in the supranational dimension.

We do not know how long it will take, and the world seems to go back to the pursuit of local interests. But the global economic dimension has helped us understand that the economic and financial power has no boundaries, whereas our boundaries are very often cages that prevent European trade unions from being effective enough. While steps forward have certainly been made, there is still room for improvement. I am thinking about social dialogue, relations with the European Commission, the negotiation with Ursula Von der Leyen – which should be mainly delegated to union federations, but which still leaves a lot of room for action.

If we look at the world of digital evolution, in the future national collective bargaining agreements, albeit within this necessary European framework, are destined to go beyond industry boundaries. 

Today, how many financial transactions are made by financial corporations outside our sector? 

How many financial transactions are made in post offices? 

Suffice it to mention that Intesa Sanpaolo now sells prepaid cards through tobacconists, that companies like Amazon and Google will soon offer much more than simple payment and cash services, but also the possibility of making actual financial transactions. 

Well-advised trade unions should start to consider the need for a single collective agreement that encompasses more than one sector. I am not saying this because I am particularly enlightened, but because we have to learn from history and try to understand what may happen, without exaggerating things.

An analysis of the context highlights three aspects:

• If we count all the countries in the world where there is a national collective bargaining agreement, we realize that they are only a minority.
• If we consider workers who are covered by an agreement and those who are not, in Italy the division is maybe 50-50 (in the banking sector, we should consider producers, who are freelancers). In the insurance sector, 42,000 workers are covered by an agreement and 130,000 are not (producers who are freelancers, covered by a law dating back to 1936).
• Digital technologies were already used to promote financial products. During the COVID-19 emergency, we realized that they can also be helpful for trade union meetings, as they make it possible to organize many more meetings than in person. This has a number of positive effects, but it also accelerates processes.

Whether we like it or not, we may also try to defend collective agreements as they are, or as they were. But this is an approach typical of neo-corporatist trade unions, which do not have a plan or project for their future and, as a result, can only try to defend their past achievements. 

Instead, the spirit of union federations and of governing change leads us not to give up what we have, but to try to understand what is happening. While it is necessary to safeguard collective agreements, but also expand the role of trade unions, it is essential to reduce simplified contracts from the 800 existing in Italy down to 40. These simplified contracts should encompass several sectors and impose mandatory constraints and rules valid for all affected workers. Wider collective agreements that cover more than one traditional sector necessarily leave more room to group-wide and transnational bargaining. In the Seventies, during the Years of Lead, changes were basically similar for all workers. In the competitive and digital market of today, the effects remain similar, but the evolution of work and of the ways in which workers interact with clients differs.

In the past, classifications in grade were the same for all and rigidly established, and the groups simply applied predetermined roles and responsibilities. Today, the situation has completely changed, so much so that the industrial sector has implemented company-wide bargaining since the Nineties and collective agreements have set some guidelines.

I have made this argument for a while. Even if I have not been successful, history will prove that this is the situation.

What I wanted to tell Mario is that there are no simplifications when it comes to the dynamics of collective agreements and their future. When the president of the Italian industrialists’ association attacked CGIL as if the union was stuck in the Seventies, I proudly replied that in the Seventies, the Secretary-General of CGIL, Luciano Lama, stated that it was silly to believe that the salary was an independent variable that could grow under any circumstances.

In CGIL, even in 1948-49, when Giuseppe Di Vittorio proposed a labour plan, he argued for workers’ responsibility. In order to give a job to all the young unemployed, and for the good of the country, workers would have to be ready to sacrifice part of their salaries.

Left-wing individuals, except for extremists, have never embraced the idea that profit, productivity and salary can be considered independent variables: they are closely related. This is why trade unions are questioning dynamics whereby inflation has been equal to zero for five years. 

This is clearly a problem, considering that in Germany productivity has increased by 29% in 17 years, whereas in Italy by only 3%. When we look at the evolution of salaries, in Italy we are basically stuck in the situation we had in 1989, whereas in Germany, thanks to growth, salaries have increased regardless of the existence of collective agreements or collective bargaining. 

This should lead us to reflect on the following question: is productivity an enemy of the world of work, or is it a challenge which the world of work poses to businesses?

In my opinion, it is a challenge posed to businesses. When the Bank of Italy lists the parameters for the growth of productivity, it does not include labour. Actually, in one year Italian employees work 350 hours more than German employees and the productivity of labour is generally higher.

This productivity is the result of innovation, investment and digital transformation. It is no chance that Italy’s economy is driven more by cost than by transformation. Of course this does not apply to Unicredit and to the other big groups, but Italy struggles on with its problems. Authoritative trade unions should not be afraid of the attack of the president of the Italian industrialists’ association. In fact, in recent years the world of businesses and capitalism has not been able to make the changes and investments that were needed. And we still have a black economy of 3.5 million people who are paid by employers half of the salaries established in collective agreements.

It is a good point to move forward with our considerations. No one who talks about reducing working hours can expect it to be paid for by a supernatural entity. With a far-sighted approach, working hours could be reduced from the current 36 hours per week established in the collective agreement for banking industry workers. For instance, already in the early 2000s, I argued that textile workers could work for 32 hours per week, including Sunday. Employees could work 8 hours per day, 4 days per week, from Monday to Friday or Thursday, or from Tuesday to Saturday. This new work schedule deserves to be experimented for what I call the fourth capitalism, i.e. the 3-4 million most innovative people. Furthermore, with a rotation mechanism with two rest days, production is increased by 20%, which equates to 600,000 people out of 3 million.

With regard to the payment of the difference between 37.5 working hours per week and 32, considering that each working hour costs 3%, the resulting total of 18% can be covered as follows: 

one third covered by the necessary increase in productivity;

one third covered by the State, which could pay social contributions in the poorer South, or pass a more general reform linking it with reduced working hours;

one third covered by something similar to the fund aimed at supporting employment which we invented in 2012 – which remains a unique example in the world.

At the time, the credit spread crisis led us to be creative and invent this measure, which ended up being an effective political tool to promote employment. We certainly cannot expect the reduction in working hours to pay for itself in the long term.

It is not only true, but also fair to say that there is a close connection between salary growth, employment measures and relations with productivity. However, we should not confuse the productivity of labour with technological and systemic productivity. But this is something that we will be able to further examine in the future.

The speed of change: 2) organizing and representing the 4.0 workforce 

Speed of change is what characterizes the 4.0 era in our sector and it is the challenge ahead of us: 

• speed of change in work organization; 
• speed of change in the workplaces which businesses create for their employees; 
• speed of change in the nature of employment relationships – from typical employees to parasubordinate workers, i.e. formally self-employed but dependent on a single employer for their income (see for instance the Mixed Contract at Intesa Sanpaolo); 

• and speed of change in working hours, with a twofold evolution:

• Firstly, there is a trend towards a more flexible distribution of working hours over the day, the week and the year. This has led to an extension in the time period between the beginning and the end of work, so much so that Italian trade unions have claimed the workers’ right to disconnect from the tools which employers can use to contact them. Let me make a digression about what I have just said. If we reduce working hours and, at the same time, we distribute them more flexibly over the day or week, I think we can already respond to some of the challenges of reduced working hours in terms of productivity and costs. This is something which Agostino has already mentioned. Being able to work at times and on days (e.g. Saturday) which are traditionally dedicated to social activities may be part of the solution. But I will stop here with my digression.
• Secondly, flexibility tends to be combined with a sort of self-management of working hours which is functional to the achievement of production and sales targets. 

The changes brought about by industry 4.0 are causing major employment issues in banks. Jobs that are still concentrated in certain places and in certain sectors of a bank are disappearing. It is true that most of the back office has been outsourced or completely automated. However, it is also necessary to protect senior workers who are more tired and less motivated to stay active. In my opinion, protecting them means accompanying them as they leave the production cycle. This sounds sad to me, but they are often happy to leave.

 While we strive to duly protect senior workers, we are also aware that many of the workers that we represent are longing to get rid of us, because they want to leave the production cycle. This is a serious problem. 

At the same time, as strongly emphasized by Agostino, we should neither underestimate nor fear digitalization. Digitalization renews part of the workforce, with jobs which combine the characteristics of employees with time management schemes and tasks more typical of self-employment. This new workforce is necessarily more flexible when it comes to working hours and place of work.

The added value of this new workforce is based on specialist professional skills, which can potentially open up important opportunities of career advancement and pay rise.

I stress the term “potentially”, because the study carried out by our research institute ISRF LAB and the analysis of sociologist Piero Valentini (see annexes to this Report) show that these new workers complain about the insufficient salary increases as against the growing demands of employers in terms of productivity and workers’ availability.

The role of trade unions at a national level and, even more so, at a company level is to represent both types of workers: the traditional workforce and the “smart” one of industry 4.0. In other words, trade unions must protect the former because their jobs are no longer essential to reach corporate targets. At the same time, they must be able to represent those who have more bargaining power with the management. The latter also need to be involved in trade unions, in order for their bargaining power not to be limited to the individual sphere and to become a source of collective strength. 

If trade unions fail to do so, this new workforce will negotiate directly with the management. This would end up seriously undermining the legitimacy of and communication with trade unions.

The Speed of change: 3) the fitness check of the EU Directives on employee involvement

The other pillar of the Project is something that we have already mentioned: 

the fitness check which the European Commission has recently launched to assess the impact and effectiveness of EU Directives on employee involvement.

Among the basic objectives of our Project,

a fundamental one is starting a concrete process to introduce new employee involvement and participation procedures. Considering the changes brought about by industry 4.0, the European Commission has launched a fitness check to assess the impact and effectiveness of the EU Directives on employee involvement which have been adopted in the last 40-45 years, since the mid-Seventies.

Our focus is on the agreements which EWCs and European Social Dialogue have promoted so far to implement employee involvement.

In the framework of our Project, we have set ourselves the task of analyzing these agreements, so as to make our contribution to the fitness check.

However, before getting into the details of what we have done so far in the framework of the Project, it is important to make a few points.

• In recent years, we have listened to professor Filip Dorssemont, the expert who has helped us elaborate our proposals for the analysis of Directives, of their effectiveness, of EWC agreements, and of the transnational agreements promoted by EWCs. Professor Dorssemont has previously pointed out that a crucial point is the lack of a consistent definition of information, consultation and participation across the various Directives on employee involvement. This generates considerable problems for the legal interpretation of the Directives, as well as for their implementation.
• Interestingly, during our Project, we as promoters, Filip Dorssemont as legal expert, and Jens Thau as President of the EBF Banking Committee for European Social Affairs agreed on this point. An idea for the future would be to involve once again Filip Dorssemont – starting from the 13 proposals he presented at our Plenary in November 2019 – and Jens Thau to draw up together a brief joint statement organized by key points. This document should be based on solid legal grounds to argue for the rewriting and harmonization of the basic definitions.
• During the meeting we organized in Rome on 7-8 October, the management representatives showed that they were open and ready to revise the Directives, in order to adapt them to the new working conditions and to the speed of change, which has been further accelerated by the COVID-19 emergency.
• Of course, we have to see whether their preliminary openness will translate into them agreeing to specific proposals. We will also have to involve MEPs like Brando Benifei (and others) to ask for their support.
• We will have to explore possible alternatives to the formal rewriting of the Directives also after the end of this European Project. We can do so with the European Banking Federation and UNI Finance, which expressed their willingness to collaborate. We imagined with them a joint initiative in 2021, with the goal of adapting the Directives on employee involvement. This joint initiative would hopefully involve also other organizations representing the social partners of sectors other than finance, starting from the ones represented within UNI Europa.

To quote Agostino Megale:

Saying, as we did, that our proposal marks an evolution that strengthens the role of EWCs does not mean that we are suggesting a revolution of the rules. We are simply envisaging the inclusion of few lines in an amendment to the Directive. If there are too many political hurdles, we must be aware that we need to protect the rules and prevent them from going back. With reference to the Recovery Fund, which promotes a digital agenda and digital transformation, and its implementation in concrete projects, we can also envisage an alternative option, without giving up on our goals. Faced with the major changes generated by an investment of more than €1 trillion, we can imagine specific implementation measures that can more easily adapt to the current situation – heavily influenced by digital technologies – without having to change legislation.

Our proposals for the revision of the EU Directives on employee involvement: the 13 proposals and the 4 key points

Under the guidance of and in close collaboration with professor Filip Dorssemont, we have drawn up a document including 13 proposals on what needs to be rewritten. We presented this document in Rome on 13 November 2019, during our latest Plenary.
Later, ISRF-LAB and FISAC-CGIL drew up a very short text with 4 key points, which – as stated by Agostino – highlights that anticipating change is key for social partners to govern it together.

I will now bring up Filip Dorssemont’s 13 proposals. We not only need to examine in detail their implications for the wording of the Directives and their potential effects on industrial relations.

We also need to work with the management representatives who took part in the meeting of 8 October and in the Plenary of 15 November 2019 to reach an agreement on these 13 proposals. To this purpose, we can count on the willingness of Jens Thau and Monica Carta to collaborate in any rewriting of some parts of the EU Directives.

Furthermore, Jens expressed his support for something which I have been saying for years on the basis of Filip Dorssemont’s analyses and which I also repeated during our latest meeting in Rome last October. I am referring to the considerable discrepancies in the basic definitions, starting from the ones of information and consultation, included in the various Directives on employee involvement.

Details aside, the pillar of all the 13 proposals is the elaboration of definitions which eliminate discrepancies in the implementation of the fundamental rights to information and consultation. The goal is to ensure a more certain and consistent implementation of these rights, without any more diverging interpretations.

The other pillar of the 13 proposals is essentially the strengthening of rights and guarantees. This is linked to the first pillar, in the sense that the definitions to be harmonized are also the most relevant and binding. They are indeed necessary to help social dialogue reach concrete agreements, while the separation between consultation and bargaining becomes more flexible.

13 proposals for the revision of the Directives to improve employee involvement
by Prof. Filip Dorssemont – University of Louvain – legal expert for our European Project

1. Generalizing the wording “with a view to reaching an agreement” to the EWC Directive 2002/38 in case of information and consultation concerning proposed decisions which affect the employees’ interests under exceptional circumstances
   from:
   art.4.4.e) of Directive 2002/14 on the information and consultation of employees
   art.7.2 of Directive 2001/23 on the transfer of undertakings
   art. 2.1 of Directive 98/59 on collective redundancies
2. Generalizing the wording “The consultation shall be conducted in such a way that the employees’ representatives can meet with the central management and obtain a response, and the reasons for that response, to any opinion they might express (Directive 2002/14 on information and consultation) to the other Directives on employee involvement.
3. In case of restructuring, the Directives on employee involvement must include an obligation to information and consultation, instead of a simple “right” for workers to be informed and consulted.
4. The EU Directives on employee involvement should include corporate strategies and economic policies in the right to information and consultation, and not only their implementation.
5. The wording “information and consultation on decisions likely to lead to substantial changes in work organisation or in contractual relations, including those covered by the Community provisions referred to in Article 9(1) (Art.4.2.c of Directive 2002/14 establishing a general framework for informing and consulting employees) is preferable to the wording “Where there are exceptional circumstances or decisions affecting the employees’ interests to a considerable extent, particularly in the event of relocations, the closure of establishments or undertakings or collective redundancies, the select committee or, where no such committee exists, the European Works Council shall have the right to be informed” (subsidiary requirements of Recast Directive 2009/38).
6. We need to have information and consultation procedures at all levels: -establishment -undertaking -group of undertakings -Community-scale group of undertakings
7. Representatives of Community-level trade unions can serve as experts for the special negotiating body. This provision should be extended to their role as experts in EWCs as well.
8. Granting the right to training for workers’ representatives not only at the EWC level, but also at the establishment or undertaking level.
9. Stating clearly that the costs of this training should be borne by the local and central management. Workers’ representatives should also be left free to choose their training path, provided that they communicate the summary of training activities to the local and central management.
10. Generalizing the role of experts at the local as well as central level.
11. Ensuring that, if there are no workers’ representatives, there is a default scenario not only in the case of transfer of undertaking, but also in the case of collective redundancies. Furthermore, making sure that, if there are no workers’ representatives, a generic system for employee involvement is put in place.
12. In case of collective redundancies, Member States can choose between two different definitions. Ensuring that there is information and consultation in both scenarios or definitions of collective redundancies. Extending the definition of collective redundancies over a period of 90 days to 6 months.
13. Establishing an explicit sanction in case of violation of information and consultation procedures, such as the suspension of the restructuring process. 

THE 4 KEY POINTS OF THE FISAC-CGIL PROPOSAL FOR A JOINT DOCUMENT BY SOCIAL PARTNERS

A) The European Works Council must have the right to be informed in advance of the impact which each Business Plan (including any digital innovation processes) of the transnational group will have on workers.

B) Information must be provided in particular on the potential quantitative and qualitative effects on jobs, work organization, smart working, working hours, including the changes deriving from the digital innovation of processes and products.

C) Information must be provided once the draft Business Plan has been drawn up, but well before it is officially made public, without prejudice to confidentiality clauses namely for the information potentially impacting on markets, notwithstanding the employees’ reps duties of communication.

D) This kind of procedure should allow European Works Councils to be consulted in good time on the impact of Business Plans and process innovations. It must also allow them to draw up a Social Plan to govern changes that may affect workers and generate redundancies. For instance, in this case the priority could be given to voluntary redundancies and measures could be taken to retrain and reinstate the affected workers.

We have not yet tried to combine together our 4 key points with professor Dorssemont’s 13 proposals. This is something that we need to do in view of our final meeting scheduled on 24-25-26 February.

In my opinion, the analysis of the two documents shows that Dorssemont’s points 1 to 6 and point 12 are related to our 4 key points.

More precisely, I propose the following scheme:

Key point A) == Points 3), 4), 5), 6)

Key point B) == Points 1), 5)

Key point C)  == Points 4), 5), 6)

Key point D) == Points 1), 2), 4), 5), 12)

On the basis of this scheme, point 5) of Dorssemont’s Proposal can provide the necessary legal basis for all 4 of our key points

5) The wording “information and consultation on decisions likely to lead to substantial changes in work organisation or in contractual relations, including those covered by the Community provisions referred to in Article 9(1) (Art.4.2.c of Directive 2002/14 establishing a general framework for informing and consulting employees) is preferable to the wording “Where there are exceptional circumstances or decisions affecting the employees’ interests to a considerable extent, particularly in the event of relocations, the closure of establishments or undertakings or collective redundancies, the select committee or, where no such committee exists, the European Works Council shall have the right to be informed” (subsidiary requirements of Recast Directive 2009/38). 

Point 4) of Dorssemont’s Proposal can provide the necessary legal basis for at least 3 of our 4 key points, i.e. A), C) and D)

4) The EU Directives on employee involvement should include corporate strategies and economic policies in the right to information and consultation, and not only their implementation.

Dorssemont’s point 1) can provide the necessary legal basis for at least 2 of our 4 key points, i.e. B) and D)

1) Generalizing the wording “with a view to reaching an agreement” to the EWC Directive 2002/38 in case of information and consultation concerning proposed decisions which affect the employees’ interests under exceptional circumstances. 

Also Dorssemont’s point 6) can provide the necessary legal basis for at least 2 of our 4 key points, i.e. A) and C)

6) We need to have information and consultation procedures at all levels: -establishment -undertaking -group of undertakings -Community-scale group of undertakings

Finally, Dorssemont’s point 3) provides the legal basis for our key point A)

3) In case of restructuring, the Directives on employee involvement must include an obligation to information and consultation, instead of a simple “right” for workers to be informed and consulted.

And point 12) provides the legal basis for our key point D)

In case of collective redundancies, Member States can choose between two different definitions. Ensuring that there is information and consultation in both scenarios or definitions of collective redundancies.  

Extending the definition of collective redundancies over a period of 90 days to 6 months.

The following points in Dorssemont’s Proposal are not directly related to our key points:

7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13. Points 7 to 11 concern the prerogatives and roles of those who take part in EWCs as workers’ representatives or trade union experts. Point 13 concerns the sanctioning regime for failures by the management of a transnational group to provide information and to implement consultation procedures. Unsurprisingly, the management representatives who participated in our previous meetings criticized and distanced themselves from the proposal in point 13.

I now deem it useful to quote another excerpt from Agostino Megale’s presentation, who connected the political dimension with the legal one of our key points and Filip Dorssemont’s 13 proposals:

We can fight against populism by building a stronger democracy and by promoting an idea of change and evolution through our Project. We know that undertakings and large groups have to make business plans and that, in the next few years, these business plans will inevitably include major investments in digital innovation and – I would add – in sustainable development. We need to have a clear understanding of the impact which these factors have on labour, in terms of number of jobs, occupational mobility and professional changes. Some jobs disappear, while new ones are created. According to a US study, out of the 50% of professions that are lost, 20-25% have already disappeared. But out of the 50% of new professions that are created, only some of them already exist, while others will appear in the next few years.

Today, these impacts are limited when a business plan is drawn up and approved by a board of directors, presented to the markets, and then discussed and negotiated wherever there are contract provisions like the ones existing in Europe (for instance, this is not the case in the United States and in Asian countries). In this framework, our proposal consists in an innovative and proactive modification of the relevant Directive, whereby European Works Councils would have an additional right before the launch of a business plan. This is why we say that information should be given in advance, in good time to be able to assess the impact of digital innovation on work. This is what we call advance information procedures in transnational groups. We have said that this information should not be generic and focus on five main points: quality of work; working hours; professional changes; smart working and working from home; innovation in processes, products and working conditions – nothing too generic. This information should be provided in advance – 60, 40 days in advance, or in any case in good time to assess the impact which the information will have also within the works council. This information should obviously be kept confidential until it is officially made public to the markets. The confidentiality clause should not only apply to transnational groups, but also to any workers’ representatives in general – even if we are now used to it. Many times, we are even more responsible than the members of boards of directors, who, because of internal strife, sometimes leak information to the press. This procedure, whereby management informs workers’ representatives of a business plan in good time, makes it possible to include in it what we may call the Social plan for corporate jobs.

This is a reference to the evolution of industrial and corporate democracy of the late Nineties, when we envisaged the creation of a social plan for large Italian undertakings in Europe in parallel with the adoption of the EWC Directive in 1994.

(…) The whole development of EWCs is based on this condition, which remains valid to date. When we imagine these amendments and modifications to the Directive, we do so to reinforce democracy and participation at the global and European level, in order for them to become an essential – and not just secondary – element of the evolution of democratic systems across Europe. 

This element of our Project is part of a wider dynamic which, after the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union at the Nice Council, should lead to the evolution of the concept of consistent minimum rights across Europe. For instance, the rights of participation existing in Germany, France and other countries could serve as an example for future common rules on the presence of employees’ representatives in supervisory boards and for the full implementation of roles and responsibilities established in national Constitutions – like in art. 46 of the Italian Constitution.

The reference to art. 46 of the Italian Constitution (see below) is in line with our reformist approach and consistent with the basic objectives of our European Project. Despite some limits and contradictions, the most advanced and consolidated experiences of employee participation made in some European countries remain a crucial source of inspiration.

For the purposes of economic and social betterment of workers and consistently with the requirements of production, the Republic shall recognise the rights of workers to collaborate in the management of enterprises, in the forms and within the limits established by law. 

After making all the necessary, possible and appropriate steps to contribute to the fitness check, the goal we now set ourselves can be summarized in this excerpt from Agostino Megale’s speeches in Rome last October:

“(…) The best way to do so is a revision of the Directives. However, we can achieve our objective also in an alternative, yet equally effective way.”

Overview of developments within the EWCs and within the Intesa Sanpaolo group

The EWC of the Unicredit Group was represented by Goffredo Molteni, member of the Secretariat of the Central Coordination Unit for FISAC-CGIL and member of the EWC Select Committee.

He strongly emphasized the need for the Select Committee to receive information in good time in order for consultation to be possible.

To quote Goffredo: 

“I will be very honest. As members of the EWC Select Committee, we receive information on the business plan before the markets. However, this information is provided to us at 7:30 a.m. of the day in which the business plan is officially made public. The Select Committee is composed of nine members from both Western and Eastern Europe and we have traditionally been very united in our relations with the management. However, in these cases our possibilities of interaction with the management are clearly very limited because of the very short notice. In other words, we are granted the right to information, but not really the right to consultation, considering that we are faced with a series of elaborate data, future scenarios and a complex, composite and difficult business plan. Indeed, ours is a pan-European bank which covers 16 countries, ranging from mature markets (Italy, Germany and Austria) to Central and Eastern European countries with completely different economic and social characteristics.”

This explanation mostly referred to major restructuring processes involving up to 8,000 redundancies and with a time lag between the cutting of jobs and the actual implementation of digitalization. Hence, these processes involved a complex transition phase in work organization which had a major impact on the affected employees. 

On the other hand, Goffredo emphasized not only the limits, but also the achievements of his EWC, namely the fact of having significantly reduced the final number of collective redundancies in comparison with the initial plans of the parent company.

During the COVID-19 emergency, the group accelerated information and consultation procedures by convening the Select Committee every two weeks. The parties are also working to turn the EWC Statement on work from home into a Joint Declaration. 

Goffredo welcomed enthusiastically our proposal for an advance information procedure for the elaboration of a Social Plan together with the Business Plan. He agreed that information should be provided in good time and that plans should be made to hire new workers and to implement effective training programmes to prevent, at least in part, collective redundancies and to support dismissed workers.

Marcello Carcereri, member of the EWC of Santander, replaced in this meeting Ana Herranz, representative of the trade union Servicios-CcOo in the parent company.

We know very well the long-standing limits of this EWC. It only meets once a year, no information is provided because of the lack of basic communication tools (intranet page), and top management representatives hardly ever participate in the annual meeting. We have received many reports of these issues. However, I think that, without a joint action plan agreed upon by the EWC representatives from Spain (who are the only ones to have significant industrial relations with the parent company) and UNI Finance, these problems will persist, making the role of the EWC in this transnational group of almost 100,000 employees even more marginal. Even the constituent agreement of this EWC fails to meet the requirements established by Directive 2009/38. Only the collaboration between the EWC representatives from Spain and UNI Finance can lead to its renegotiation. 

Similarly to other groups, the COVID-19 emergency has led the Santander group to adopt remote work. In Spain, the most vulnerable workers have been protected thanks to the measures taken by the central government (however, 700 branches were closed during the first lockdown, 400 of which will probably never reopen). In the United Kingdom, there has been an agreement on demotions which guarantees the payment of salary differences for 24 months.

The COVID-19 emergency has also had a major impact on the consumer credit market. To deal with it, Santander Consumers (where Marcello is a company-level representative of FISAC-CGIL) has signed an agreement which combines remote work and 6-hour shifts for 6 days with the goal of preserving the 650 jobs of the group in Italy. 

Franco Cappellini, on behalf of the EWC Select Committee of Crédit Agricole, underlined two key points on information and consultation:

1) the Select Committee receives information promptly, so that it can effectively monitor the business plan, the annual accounts of the group and all the management’s new proposals;

2) consultation is effective, also thanks to the constituent agreement of the EWC, which establishes that organizational changes with a transnational impact must be presented to the EWC in good time to allow the EWC to express its opinion.

Franco also stressed another two elements. Firstly, the Global Agreement (C.A. is one of the largest banking groups in the world) extends a number of basic rights to all the workers of the transnational group. Secondly, the new website of the EWC was made more user-friendly during the COVID-19 emergency.

However, it is useful to quote an important excerpt of Franco’s speech, which confirms the separation between the traditional workforce made up of “mass workers” and the new 4.0 workforce segment:

As Agostino and Mario said, a divide is emerging between the branches which keep on working with traditional instruments – which due to COVID-19 have reduced their workload by 50% – and the central departments, like marketing and all the new emerging professions, e.g. IT and digitalization. There are now huge differences in the working hours, workload and targets.

The new roles are almost entirely occupied by young people working in marketing and digital technologies (some legacy systems are still used in the IT department and digitalization has yet to be completed). 

But all the new tasks are performed by younger engineers. These young people no longer see trade unions as a form of protection, because they are used to working and speaking directly with the central department. As a result, they believe that the idea of trade unions is outdated. In all of these new emerging jobs, colleagues see opportunities to stand out and do new things.

There is a growing divide. On the one hand, there are the traditional branches which, like in all banking groups, are being reduced in number and size. On the other hand, there are the central departments which are becoming aware that local resources can be used more efficiently. COVID-19 has helped them understand that people can work from home also in Southern regions. It is enough to make it an objective, but unfortunately there are not yet any rules to protect the rights of individuals.

Many are advocating for the right to disconnect, which we included in the Global Agreement and which should therefore be applied across the entire group. This is a really important right. I can personally confirm it, as I have been working from home almost from the first day. 

You no longer work early in the morning, because you actually start to work at 10-10:30 a.m. But then you work until 10 p.m. Clients are at home, specialists like me as well, and the central department completes transactions, marketing and other activities towards the evening.

Therefore, without rules, there is this mess, this confusion among colleagues.

On behalf of the Secretariat of the Central Coordination Unit for FISAC-CGIL in Intesa Sanpaolo, Elena Cherubini strongly emphasized that the largest banking group in Italy – and one of the most important ones in Europe – has yet to create a EWC. The international dimension of Intesa Sanpaolo has even grown bigger since the merger by incorporation of the UBI group. Now the employees working outside Italy amount to 40% of the total workforce. They are mostly concentrated in the new EU Member States and candidate countries, as well as in the Bank of Alexandria in Egypt (with 80% of its shares now controlled by Intesa Sanpaolo).

The creation of a EWC has become even more urgent in light of the COVID-19 emergency, which has further accelerated changes in work organization. (…) It would have been important to exchange information on the health and safety measures adopted by our bank across Europe. We might have introduced best practices from the grassroots level upwards. While governments may fail to introduce health and safety measures promptly and effectively, maybe best practices implemented at grassroots level in undertakings can be successful. It would have been important, but we will continue to work hard for the creation of a EWC. I think that the participation of management in our November event was an important factor. Indeed, we have to start by meeting each other and establishing human relations. I think that was the first time that our colleagues from the banks of other countries saw the faces of their Italian management.

So let’s build on what we have to continue to work in this direction. Mario mentioned the creation of the Trade Union Alliance, which helped us to formally request the setting up of the EWC.

Elena underlined a fundamental element for this session of the Project when she stated:

(…) We are here also to talk about employee involvement, and it is very important to have some of them participating in this session. However, I would like to conclude by saying that employee involvement requires a certain approach by us, as trade unionists. Trade unions must be culturally prepared to be ready to enlarge the number of workers they represent and involve.

The traditional tools used by trade unions, like in-person meetings, demonstrations and even strikes, are now challenged by the situation. But we must be the first to believe that new forms of action are possible, which we have to find, invent and communicate to workers. As the other speakers have shown, workers need supranational dialogue, simply because they all have the same problems. 

We have to look at internationalization and digitalization as challenges that can help us feel better and overcome the fear of change.

With respect to work from home, Elena stressed the need to revise the company-level agreement on the topic, which predated the COVID-19 emergency: (…) We need an agreement which makes reference to national industry-wide standards or laws, and which increases the number of days of work from home to 10 per month, in line with the national industry-wide agreement. Considering the fixed costs of working from home, the lack of meal vouchers (not distributed in this case) and of an ergonomic workspace, we must find regulatory and remuneration guarantees.

Mariarosaria Mazzotta also talked about the situation and current changes in the Intesa Sanpaolo group. In particular, she talked about the so-called Mixed Contract which was agreed upon by the social partners to regulate workforce segments that are a perfect example of the changes brought about by industry 4.0. We have also often referred to them: young workers whose workweek is regulated for two days in five by the ordinary contract that generally applies to the Intesa Sanpaolo employees, and by a freelance contract for the remaining three days. 

The Intesa Sanpaolo employee who participated in our Meeting, is a typical example of this 4.0 workforce segment: highly qualified and specialized, his working conditions are regulated by the so-called Mixed Contract. 

Below is the transcription of Mariarosaria’s speech, including the questions posed to her by sociologist Piero Valentini:

Mariarosaria Mazzotta – Coordination Unit FISAC-CGIL in Intesa Sanpaolo

I am a company-level union representative (editor’s note: hence the union representative most directly in contact with the workforce) and I am a Coordinator in the Intesa Sanpaolo group. I am here to talk about transformations in the Intesa Sanpaolo group and about what we call the Mixed Contract. My colleague Gerardo Carrara next to me works under this kind of contract, which is the result of a new way of organizing work.

We know very well that banks all have different organizational systems, something which was not the case in the past. They also have different business channels.

How did we get to the Mixed Contract? 

In Intesa Sanpaolo, we started from a project concerning employees focusing on investments. Some of them were asked to work offsite and to register as Financial Promoters, even if they remained full-time employees of the bank with an open-ended contract. So the only difference was that they were used to meeting clients outside their workplaces.

This initial experiment was not very successful. On the one hand, other trade unions tried to discourage people. On the other hand, the colleagues who passed the exam as financial promoters actually never wanted to perform their job outside their workplaces.

In the meantime, digitalization was making huge steps forward, so we came to the offers made at a distance.

(Piero Valentini) When did that happen? More or less? When was it?

(Mariarosaria) The initial experiments I told you about took place in 2015. In the last two years, Intesa Sanpaolo has tried to meet clients’ needs in a new way, through transactions offered at a distance. These offers were made also by employees working in the branches. This turned out to be useful when COVID-19 struck, because in this area we were already prepared. 

In 2017, with the major bank crises, Intesa opted for something new, i.e. what we call workers with a Mixed Contract. However, this instrument was mainly used for financial promoters of other banks in order to have new assets under management.

So there was this new possibility. On 1 February 2017, when the relevant agreement was signed, this initiative was still considered “experimental”. Basically, financial promoters of other banks were offered the possibility of a stable job. For two days per week they would work as part-time employees with an open-ended contract, while for the remaining three days they would work as financial promoters, bringing their customer base to Intesa Sanpaolo.

In this experimental phase, internal employees also had the opportunity to request the switch to a Mixed Contract. 

How? They would work part-time as employees and part-time as freelancers. After 24 months, they would go back to being full-time employees, unless they explicitly requested to continue with the Mixed Contract also after the initial 24 months.

The experiment with financial promoters was not very successful, because those who approached Intesa Sanpaolo did not manage many clients nor large asset portfolios.

The workers who accepted had very low annual incomes, around €15,000. We offered them a net income of €900 per month as employees. In addition, they would continue to do what they already did, i.e. manage asset portfolios as freelancers.

So after a while, the bank slowed down the hiring of financial promoters, limited the number of eligible workers and finally stopped this procedure for promoters.

In the meantime, Intesa Sanpaolo had acquired the banks based in Veneto.

(Piero Valentini) What were the main issues and opportunities of this experimental initiative?

(Mariarosaria) I will give you some useful information to assess the effectiveness of the Mixed Contract.

These people work as part-time employees for 40% of the week, receiving a net monthly salary of about €900. For the remaining 60% of the week, in the first six months the company guarantees a minimum gross income of €1,354, i.e. a net monthly income of about €1,000-1,100. During the lockdown period, we were able to extend the guaranteed minimum income to 12 months for those who had been hired at the end of 2019.

As a result, workers with a Mixed Contract earn a part-time salary plus a guaranteed minimum income for the first six months, for a total net monthly remuneration of about €2,000.

Why did it not work? More precisely, why was the growth of this category of workers below expectations? Because promoters’ mentality has much more to do with freelancers than with employees, who must comply with several constraints and rules. On the other hand, employees benefit from the guarantees established in all the industry-wide and national agreements implemented by Intesa Sanpaolo: complete health care coverage, supplementary social security scheme, and all the other rights and bonuses we have as employees.

The promoters who were hired with a Mixed Contract received a number of benefits: a part-time salary plus all the additional welfare bonuses. Furthermore, they kept on working as freelancers, bringing their asset portfolios to Intesa Sanpaolo.

The group had initially planned to hire 400 or more promoters in this way. However, after a while it stopped because of the issues I have just mentioned.

(Piero Valentini) Sorry for interrupting you, but we have a very tight agenda. It is very important that you stressed the need for more information, but we could also examine this issue more in depth separately.

(Mariarosaria) Let’s now get to the near past and to the present of the Mixed Contract. Young graduates are selected on the basis of their relational skills. They are hired for a paid internship – as established by the Regions – which serves as a training course in preparation for the exam to become financial promoters.

Once they pass the exam for financial promoters, they are hired according to the scheme I have just described. For two days per week (equal to 40% of working hours) they work as part-time employees, while for the remaining three days they work as freelancers, with a guaranteed minimum income for the first six months, for a total monthly remuneration of about €2,000. In addition, the bank assigns some existing clients to them and undertakes to pay commissions for any new clients they acquire.

Let’s now talk about the critical aspects. 

The most important one is the insufficient training for the two days in which they work as employees. Being recent graduates, they have to learn everything about working in a bank. They have a university degree and they have extensive knowledge of financial matters, but they have no work experience in the real context. On the one hand, the digitalization processes certainly lead them to work with clients in a different way. On the other hand, they need training both for the two days per week in which they work as employees in the branches and for the three days in which they represent the bank as freelancers. They are formally self-employed, but dependent on a single employer for their income. Hence, they need well-structured, complex and timely training. This is a very important issue: we have made major steps forward at the contract level, but we still have a lot to do.

Silvia Romano, Deputy Secretary of the EWC of BNP-Paribas, joined us by video from Madrid because she was not able to get to Rome due to the travel restrictions.

She confirmed us that there are some persistent issues in industrial relations with the parent company. More precisely, there are some contradictory attitudes that have a negative impact on the functioning of the EWC. For instance, the central management initially refused to sign a European agreement on telework. However, during the latest virtual meeting of the Select Committee – extended to countries that are not represented in it – the management changed attitude. To quote Silvia, (…) the plenary with 50 members who represent the 23 countries in which BNP operates was replaced by a meeting of the Select Committee, the heads of the HR Department and some European experts.

During this mini-plenary we once again asked for a European agreement on telework. This time, the heads of the HR Department accepted the idea. We have already started to assess all possibilities in the various countries to collect all the available data. We will certainly keep you informed.

Silvia also confirmed that the trade unions are faced with the challenges posed by the extensive and radical organizational changes caused by the COVID-19 emergency. This transformation is questioning the effectiveness of the traditional and well-tested instruments used by union representatives, who must continue to be the most direct and immediate contact persons for workers.

Finally, Silvia stressed once again the existence of a problem which she had also highlighted during the project we carried out from 2015 to 2017: the less and less sustainable imbalance between the advanced and dynamic industrial relations existing in the group and in the EWC and a EWC Agreement that is still based on the old article 13 of Directive 94/45. It is a political issue that must be overcome with the political determination of the EWC, with the support of UNI Finance. We should also bear in mind that, from a regulatory and legal point of view, those EWC agreements now lack a legal basis. On the one hand, the transnational group has changed in size. On the other hand, these old agreements can no longer exist, because the transitional period established by Directive 2009/38 ended some time ago.

The experiences of two workers representative of industry 4.0 change and of their direct trade union representatives

Our survey involved about 30 workers representative of this strategic segment of the new banking workforce. The results of the questionnaire were analyzed by our research institute LAB together with sociologist Piero Valentini. In the annexes you will find the complete transcription of their presentation during our meeting of 7-8 October.

We also listened to the stories of an employee from Santander Consumers and one from Intesa Sanpaolo. They told us about their work experiences and contexts. They gave us a general overview, as well as their personal point of view. They have two skills which are different but equally emblematic of the professional roles that are emerging in the changing scenario. So their stories are a perfect match for the indications and expectations we had set ourselves when we laid down the objectives of the Project. 

The complete transcriptions of their speeches are included in the annexes to this Report. This is probably the easiest way to demonstrate the validity of the basic assumptions which we had made already during the presentation of our project in April 2018:

1) This segment of the workforce is strategic, because it is highly skilled in sectors like IT governance and the sale of financial products which are decisive to generate added value in the credit production process.

2) These workers are dynamic and strongly motivated. They find their jobs engaging because they require their know-how and because, in the organization of the entire production cycle of the bank, they have a good degree of autonomy in organizing their working hours and productivity. This condition is almost antithetical to the one of “mass workers”, who are the ones most heavily affected by restructuring processes.

3) The most critical aspect in their condition is the contradiction between their strategic role in the production cycle – which leads them to be strongly motivated and to have certain salary expectations – and the classic/Marxian “exploitation” of their living labour (their expectations are not entirely met) and insufficient response to their training needs.

4) However, this issue does not potentially unite these employees to make joint salary demands. As I have already stated, the individual and corporate situations are very diverse, both in terms of current salaries and of concrete prospects of pay rise and professional advancement. For instance, in the case of Intesa Sanpaolo’s “Mixed Contract”, the 24-month deadline to decide whether to permanently confirm this kind of contract or to turn it into a full-time employment contract may not be enough to make a final decision on the basis of the experience accumulated in the 24 months.

5) These employees ask for the traditional help of trade unions for things like understanding their payrolls and the right to disconnect, i.e. the right to working hours typical of this workforce segment.

6) Trade unions are willing to and aware of the need to respond to the demands of these workers. However, they encounter some difficulties related to these workers’ organization of space and time. Furthermore, union representatives require training on how to best meet the demands of these employees and how to turn them into an organized movement.

Point 6) concerns a fundamental element of the Project, i.e. the training needs of union representatives. After the stories of those two employees, and after the speech by Franco Cappellini (see above), we asked the question directly to Goffredo Molteni and Mariarosaria Mazzotta.

Through our Project, we maintain that training is required for the union representatives who have to represent also this kind of workers. We should not take it for granted that union representatives inside a company or production unit have this kind of professional skills, considering the cognitive, informational and work tools they have been provided by trade unions’ training. 

It is difficult to engage the 4.0 workforce segment, especially if they have no physical workplace. Company-level union representatives must often find ways to engage these employees and keep them engaged as union members.

They will not remain members if we cannot respond to their needs, or if they consider our responses inadequate for any kind of reason.

Together with Piero Valentini, I asked Goffredo Molteni and Mariarosaria Mazzotta, who represent this new kind of workers, the following question:

Do you think that union representatives require training to be able to represent these workers and their needs in the framework of more general union policies? What are the conditions necessary to engage these workers and to adjust the work of union representatives to the new characteristics of these workers?

So the question is about both organizational conditions and training.

If this is a problem, how can we face it and solve it? 

Below are some excerpts from the long answer provided by Goffredo Molteni and the complete reply of Mariarosaria Mazzotta.

Goffredo Molteni:

My immediate answer is yes. Union representatives do need training to engage, understand and respond to new-generation workers, who, on average, are very young. They are the ones who provide remote help, work online, and reply to your phone calls when you need help with bank transfers and other bank issues, but also investment advice. 

After the initial period in which they have to settle in, these workers strongly need the help of trade unions. Often times, their initial remuneration is quite low and they work hundreds of kilometres away from their place of abode or of birth. So they have a number of needs which fall within the scope of traditional trade union activities: understanding the payroll, respect of work shifts, payment of benefits, respect of the breaks they are entitled to in a digitalized service that is very similar to call centres. Actually, if I use this term, the management immediately stops me, because they are not call centres, but consultancy centres. However, they make use of electronic systems which record the worker’s status and control their activities. 

Workers are very sensitive to these issues and we need to understand and respond to their needs. We must be well prepared to understand how to best interact with these workers and meet their demands. These are needs which, after all, are part of the traditional activities of trade unions: payrolls, breaks, benefits, controls.

These new workers demand guarantees and respect for their professional growth opportunities. We must work to understand and help them understand the whole of the banking sector and explain them the prospects of professional development, growth and transfer.

There is also another fundamental element.

  

Why do we need to invest in the internal human capital by providing continuous training in information technologies – both for senior and junior workers? 

Because for junior employees there is a major risk. What do they demand? 

They demand to be trained and kept up-to-date. They join the bank with certain IT skills and they no longer have the concept of bank which I had, or which people who began to work 20 years later than me have. Young workers want to receive training. In fact, there is a huge turnover problem. These young people are telling us: 

“But when I did my job interview, it sounded like I would design skyrockets and now I am here, still using Excel sheets. I did a 6-month internship at Microsoft in the United States and after six months here my CV has actually gotten worse.”

 This is a major challenge. How can we face it? 

We must voice their demands and challenge the management to provide training in-house or to purchase it externally. Today the situation is quite imbalanced. We need to provide continuous and certified training both to workers aged 35 to 55 and to young employees. We are losing young talents, so we need continuous and certified training to respond to their needs and provide them with useful tools and skills.

Mariarosaria Mazzotta

Many of the young workers we represent at FISAC-CGIL have become members of our union without even knowing me. We have never met, but we regularly speak on the phone and exchange information through digital tools. They feel the need of trade unions, because they have no idea of how the bank works: they know nothing about our classification in grade, our work organization and the rights they have. No one tells them anything. The management does not give them any information, so they come to us to receive it. 

When we manage to give them useful indications, young workers are well organized through WhatsApp groups and quickly spread the information around. If you tell something to one of them, many others will receive that information and they will look for our help. So we must be able to represent them and find a way to engage them in a new way, because maybe we are used to our old lifestyle. 

Personally, I have worked in a bank for 30 years. When I joined the industry, the world was different, everything was different and now everything has changed. Every worker does something different. There are now the ones using technological tools, the ones working online, the ones with a Mixed Contract, and everything else which may follow – because I am pretty sure that in the future there will be other innovations. 

So we must find a different way to be closer to them, speak their language and use their instruments.

I have interacted with several new members from various central and southern regions of Italy (Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, Latium), some of whom now live in the north (Liguria, Lombardy). I have never personally met them, but I have always been regularly in touch with them. Unfortunately we speak of the right to disconnect, but we never disconnect from our cell phones, not even on Saturday or Sunday. But we must try to find new models to represent this new generation of workers. This is something imperative we need to do now.

The stories we heard on 7 October 2020 and the analysis of the questionnaires filled out by a sample of workers of the 4.0 segment

A more in-depth analysis will be made by our friends from the research institute ISRF-LAB. I will only underline a series of aspects which emerged in Roberto Errico’s speeches and which confirm the basic assumptions we made in 2018 when we presented this European Project (see chapter: The speed of change: 2) organizing and representing 4.0 workforce)

However, the results of the questionnaires highlight a number of issues which we can summarize as follows:

• The increasing workload does not correspond to a proportional increase in productivity. Indeed, a significant part of the workload increase is due to corporate shortcomings, inefficiencies and delays in the implementation of digital procedures. The speed of innovation brings corporate problems to light and the workers affected by change have to bear the burden of it. As a result, they complain about the insufficient training provided by the company, both in quantitative and in qualitative terms.
• The larger responsibilities and more advanced professional skills required to workers by the 4.0 industry does not translate into an adequate pay rise. In this regard, the action of trade unions is made more difficult by the large variety of professions and individual situations existing in this workforce segment that joins the production cycle. I have already asked our friends of the research institute LAB to carry out an additional analysis next January. We must assess to which extent this is due to resistance by management (which we can counter with specific demands) and to which extent this may be due to market dynamics that keep salary levels as they are.

Our dialogue with management representatives

The last part of our session on Thursday, 8 October was dedicated to the exchange of views with Jens Thau, President of the EBF Banking Committee for European Social Affairs, Giancarlo Ferrara, Head of Social Affairs for the Italian Banking Association (ABI), and Monica Carta, Head of International Social Dialogue for the Unicredit Group.

The full transcriptions of their speeches are available in the annexes to this Report. Here I would like to list the 7 points which Monica Carta drew up in preparation for our meeting in Rome on 7-8 October. They are all very interesting, but point 6 is entirely in bold, because I think it is an important requirement to elaborate a joint proposal with our social partners, starting from professor Dorssemont’s 13 proposals and our 4 key points.

1.

Innovations in society, in the competitive context and in the world of work are quickly redefining roles and responsibilities, probably as never before. This process has been further accelerated by the COVID-19 emergency. This emergency has also led to a rapid reskilling and upskilling in digitalization of large groups of the population.

2.

Occupational mobility: we are now faced with a “hybrid environment”, in which the old model has disappeared and many workers can now contribute to corporate performance anywhere they are, regardless of them being in an office. We have rediscovered the value of processes and activities.

3.

Considering the entity of new challenges, we must continue to promote inclusion. No one should be left behind in this challenge, independently from their age, cultural and professional background, and individual peculiarities.

4. Internalizing change requires time. Employers and trade unions can act through advanced social dialogue to enhance the human capital and in order for workers to actively contribute to the company’s success and to their own professional growth also in the new post-pandemic scenario.

5. Advanced social dialogue must set itself the goal of qualitatively improving the daily experience of workers and of defining a set of rules to manage change in the interest of workers, of undertakings, and ultimately of society.

6. EU Directives on employee involvement must take recent changes into account. Therefore, it is necessary to update the current regulatory framework to ensure that social dialogue keeps playing its crucial role in all EU Member States.

7. Thanks to digital technologies, the EWC of Unicredit has always maintained dialogue during the months of the pandemic. We have kept on exchanging views on the most important topics for our colleagues, above all remote work.

Jens Thau agreed with Monica Carta’s point 6) when he addressed a crucial issue which I raised during the meeting and which we repeatedly stressed in recent years (thanks to Filip Dorssemont, who first raised it at the time of the recasting of EWC Directive 94/45, which led to the adoption of EWC Directive 2009/38): the lack of consistency in the definitions of Information and Consultation, as well as in the procedures and objectives of Information and Consultation between the various EU Directives on employee involvement. Some years ago, the European Commission launched a fitness check of these Directives and our European Project intends to make an original and independent contribution to it.

Jens Thau and Giancarlo Ferrara both insisted that the stakeholders of European Social Dialogue should be able to choose the procedures, timeframe and objectives of dialogue independently. In our case, the stakeholders are UNI Finance, with its affiliated national trade unions, and the European employers’ federations – three in the banking sector and three in the insurance sector. This certainly does not mean that we should work without the European Commission or other institutions. It means that we should agree on joint procedures and objectives in order to achieve the results which the speed of change imposes on social partners if they want to continue to play a significant role.

Angelo Di Cristo confirmed that European Social Dialogue in the finance industry is in a very good condition – a joint achievement of the social partners. He said it without being rhetorical, and he underlined that social dialogue is very efficient thanks to the independence of stakeholders. In this regard, he referred to the Joint Statement on Telework and suggested that we could build on it to reach an agreement on a Joint Statement on Work from Home.

Future prospects and credits

We agreed with Angelo Di Cristo and Jens Thau to work together on joint proposals for the rewriting of the most critical aspects of the Directives on employee involvement, starting from Directive 2009/38. The goal would be to involve also other sectors represented by UNI to elaborate together in 2021 a joint document or joint proposals for the revision of these Directives.

As far as we are concerned, the contract for our European Project VS/2019/0016 will end on 31 March 2021. We will use the next three months to organize our Final Conference, within the limits imposed by the restrictions. We will involve all the trade unions which originally joined the Project, together with the employers’ representatives. 

We have already a preliminary agreement for 26 February 2021 – also with MEP Brando Benifei, who has collaborated with us in the last five years, both in this and in other European Projects, helping us promote our initiatives concerning EWC legislation. 

We will also involve the workers and their direct union representatives who took part in our meeting on 7 October 2020. Considering the successful experiment, we have already invited them to our Final Conference.

With regard to their participation and to the analysis of industry 4.0 change, we will continue to rely on and to collaborate with the research institute ISRF-LAB.

As a follow-up to this European Project, we plan to work on the initiative we envisaged with Jens Thau and Angelo Di Cristo. This initiative would be fully in line with what we established in the Contract signed with the DG Employment of the European Commission.

We will of course continue to work towards the completion of our Project with Agostino Megale, Secretary-General of FISAC-CGIL from 2010 to 2018, then President of ISRF-LAB, who now also holds a prestigious position at a national level in CGIL.

We will also involve the International Department of FISAC-CGIL in our collective discussion.

Last but not least, the meeting of 7-8 October 2020, as well as all the other collective initiatives of the Project, and the preparation of paper, electronic, online and audio-visual materials have been made possible by the accurate and professional work of the Organization Department of FISAC-CGIL, headed by Cristiano Hoffmann, and by the Administration Department of FISAC-CGIL, headed by Rita Diotallevi.

We know we can count on their invaluable support, together with the one of Simona Borelli from the Office of the Secretary-General. We can also count on the political support of the legal representative of our Project, Nino Baseotto, Secretary-General of FISAC-CGIL. Since he was elected few months ago, he has only recently learned about the details of our Project, but we will certainly involve him in the preparation of our next initiatives.

Mario Ongaro • European Project Director