We had meant this meeting not just as a mere kick-off one, but  also as a Seminar to start going in-depth a number of pillars of the Project, according to a pattern that we would reiterate in all the other 4 collective events, even if of course by tailoring thee Seminar approach according to the route of the Project.

We had 16 participants including the Head of Uni Finance, Angelo Di Cristo and our external Expert, as well as 8 reps from the transnational groups and the Fisac staff for the Project

Our participants caught that meaning of ours very well and delivered presentations and contributions all aimed to provide us with the necessary information and knowledge about the transnational group and the concerned EWC that they represented.

Therefore we got presentations on Santander, Crédit Agricole, Unicredit Group, contributions on Bnp Paribas, Intesa SanPaolo, Soc.Générale, KBC.

The same participants had in the meantime filled in the questionnaire that our Research Institute had sent out to frame the 4.0 employees and their attitudes. The concerned report was delivered alongside the report of the Project Manager and the one of the Research Inst. President, covering all aspects introducing the Project and setting the Project in the economic, political and social scenarios.

In the framework of such a dense and committing Seminar the lesson by Prof. Filip Dorssemont about the EU Directive for the Employee Involvement was the perfect training element and conclusion of those 3 half days in Sofia.

Setting this First Meeting in Sofia was a concrete sign of our deep and now really historical relationship that we as Fisac Cgil have been building over the last 2 decades with the finance unions of the whole region OF Central/eastern Europe from Poland to Turkey. The same spirit is behind our choice to set the First Plenary Seminar in Belgrade.

This Seminar was prepared by a first questionnaire, addressed to the 8 transnational groups reps who were part of the Steering Group of the Project alongside with the Fisac staff. That “overall picture” was mainly focussed on the workforce 4.0 side and the main outcomes of this first survey were:

Employees (and in particular the 4.0 ones) are keen on flexibility, they think that salary increase has to be a result of productivity increase, the feeling of belonging to a company is not vanishing through smart working. So we got very challenging answers for the union movement, as long as we were immediately put through a specific section of the workforce, the section we were mostly interested in investigating, and we were discovering their positive attitudes towards the change, moreover a kind of attitudes that somehow were contradicting the defensive policy that unions had so far considered appropriate in order to protect these employees and their rights/ guarantees. Said that, these outcomes were strongly tempered by other outcomes which showed not only by a demand of training not only by these 4.0 employees whose demand of training was poorly met by their employer so that they were not enough enabled to perform their job with the skill required to perform it, but also a demand of training concerning the section of workforce made of “obsolete” employees whose jobs were either menaced or already cancelled as an organizational effect of digitalization, and whose perspective to be relocated and redeployed is mainly depending by a well centered and effective re-training plan.

The debate about the above outcomes of this first survey has in particular stressed the problematic issue of trade-union recruitment of young employees (who largely correspond with the 4.0 employees): the relationship with them has to be build up patiently by being next to them and getting their trust. The young employees’ issue is already emerging in terms of how to renew unions: more turnover? ok, but the point is also how to organise young employees 4.0, those highly skilled ones and highly motivated to work, those 4.0 ones who are very used to flexibility and self management of their working time in order to attain their productivity goals, I mean the things that have then been confirmed by the surveys made between October 2020 and February 2021 by Valentini the sociologist.

But again, it’s so difficult to organise people working somewhere else and isolated! Unions need more resources and a specific training to cope with such a context.

Mario Ongaro • Project Manager