Banking contract, everything about the crucial week for renewal
The 280,000 employees of Intesa Sanpaolo, Unicredit, Banco Bpm, Bper, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Credit Agricole, Bnl Bnp Paribas and other banks are waiting for the renewal of the national collective bargaining agreement. ABI summit tomorrow, meeting with the unions on Thursday. Closing the negotiation is possible by the end of November, not earlier. The request for an increase of 435 euros, the (cross-eyed) eyes of the other sectors, the role of Messina and the other news from the union table
The crucial meeting is scheduled for 6.30 pm tomorrow: the ABI presidential committee meets to define an acceleration on the renewal of the national collective labor agreement which affects 280,000 employees of Italian banks, that is, just to remain within large groups, Intesa Sanpaolo, Unicredit, Banco Bpm, Bper, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Credit Agricole and Bnl Bnp Paribas. The aim of the meeting is to give a delegation to the Labor and Trade Union Affairs Committee of the Banking Association itself to try to close the negotiations with the unions probably by the end of November. The "delegation" is a practice of the ABI, foreseen by the internal rules of Palazzo Altieri: a fundamental step that usually anticipates the final phase of the negotiation and the subsequent signing of the new national contract.
The air we breathe seems positive, so much so that in recent weeks there has been an acceleration in discussions between banks and unions. Which is why it will not be the ABI executive, on the agenda for 16 November, but the Presidential Committee, convened on an extraordinary basis tomorrow, to delegate the president of the Casl, Ilaria Dalla Riva, and the general director of the Banking Association, Giovanni Sabatini, to try to close the renewal. The picture, in any case, will be clearer on 9 November, when a plenary meeting is scheduled between the representatives of the ABI and those of all the trade union organisations, Fabi, First Cisl, Fisac CGIL, Uilca and Unisin. Next Thursday's meeting is an important one, but it is impossible to imagine that the renewal agreement has already been signed.
The highlight of this negotiation, curiously kept under the spotlight even outside the world of credit, with slightly squinty eyes, is the economic increase of 435 euros on average per month requested by the banking unions, to be spread over a three-year period and not in a year, contrary to what was reported by some press outlets. It is not explained why some media and observers are comparing, with politically incorrect content, what is happening in the banking sector with situations which are not comparable in other sectors of the Italian economy. In particular, the Confindustria summit is agitated, which sees in those 435 euros a threat for industrialists, as if the renewal of the Abi contract represented a dangerous precedent. In Confindustria, still fond of "assembly lines", they insistently refer to the productivity of industries, but the comparison between factory and bank does not hold up: because if on the one hand there are production lines and goods on the market, on the other part there is a socially relevant profession: financial intermediation, which is not a product category. Such a specific area – the one in which the money and savings of families and businesses are handled – that has always convinced banks to have their own employers' association (first Assicredito, then Abi), peremptorily rejecting the idea of joining other associations category for trade union representation. An important political distinction that has been going on for over 70 years. Or, perhaps, it bothered someone that the CEO of the first European banking group, Carlo Messina, has repeatedly said publicly that with or without an agreement in the Abi, Intesa will pay its employees the 435 euro increase requested by the union, plus the restoration of part of the severance pay, frozen since 2012.
As regards, in more detail, the economic demands of the unions, the latest quarterly data certify that the claims for increases are more than legitimate: Unicredit closed the first nine months of the year with 6.7 billion euros in profits, Intesa with 6.1 billion, although it expects to close the year with over 7.3 billion in profit. Numbers that suggest a much brighter 2023 for the country's entire banking sector than 2022, when overall profits, driven by the increase in the cost of money, still soared to 25 billion. Exceptional results which, according to Messina's forecasts, will continue for a long time to come. The economic requests, therefore, are legitimized by the numbers and the recognition of the bankers appears necessary. Moreover, it was Messina himself, last October 27, on the occasion of a social initiative in Brescia , who reiterated the need to guarantee workers a salary increase. A position which, moreover, was made known by the head of Ca de' Sass at the Fabi national congress in June, when Lando Maria Sileoni was confirmed, with a plebiscite, at the helm of the first organization in the sector.
It is worth underlining, among the statements in Brescia by the leader of the first banking group (all the general secretaries of the trade unions invited by Intesa were present at the event), the passage in which reference is made to the negotiations between banks and unions. Despite having withdrawn the trade union delegation to the ABI Casl last February, Intesa Sanpaolo remained in the Banking Association and tomorrow, with one of its representatives on the presidential committee, it will participate, strategically, in the ABI decisions on the renewal of the national contract . The same goes for November 16th when the Abi executive will meet, in which Intesa representatives will also participate fully. But the signing of the national contract will not result in the Messina-led bank's automatic return to CASL: the stomach aches remain and the fact that the sector has reunited in the tug-of-war with the government over the tax for extra profits may not be sufficient to restore total pax.
Furthermore, representatives of Federcasse, the association that manages the national cooperative credit contract, also sit on the Abi executive. Around 35,000 employees work in the BCCs, who pay attention to the Abi dispute because their renewals usually follow closely those of their cousins in the other banks. While the negotiation of the managers' contract travels at different times, even though the parties, both employers and unions, are the same.
What is certain, as StartMag radars were able to pick up, is the banks' determination to close the negotiation quickly. The urgency of the bankers would be dictated by budgetary reasons, but the unions are not at all inclined to give gifts, leaving on the table the arrears already accrued for 2023 (the contract expired at the end of 2022 and was extended until December 31st ). Just as the restoration of the basis for calculating severance pay (TFR) will not be the subject of negotiation. The TFR discount was created in 2012, in the midst of the financial crisis and served to support the sector in a complex phase, also characterized by some important bank failures and bailouts. However, that agreement, which guarantees savings on severance pay between 0.8% and 1% of labor costs, had a beginning and an end, as the banks themselves knew from the beginning. In short, it is not a question of further economic recognition, but only of restoring ordinary administration. If the unions, as part of a normal quid pro quo, are willing to concede something, it will be on the flexibility front; other concessions could arrive in terms of transfers between offices, for some roles, with the extension of the kilometer radius. While the Youth Employment Fund (FOC) could also be used to increase the salaries of those who, close to retirement, are willing to switch to part time to encourage the hiring of under 35s. The review of classifications, however, would be carried over to a future negotiation. The banks, then, could open the doors of their boards of directors to workers' representatives (look at the German model): here, however, the national contract is blunt and therefore everything will have to be defined within the individual companies. For now there is only one case: Fabi represented by Mauro Paoloni on the board of directors of Banco Bpm, where the CEO Giuseppe Castagna has always demonstrated important social sensitivity towards his employees.
What appears evident is, despite the current fracture taking place within the ABI trade union committee, where Intesa representatives participate as observers, it is a form of jealousy mixed with all-Italian envy of other sectors towards the banks. Which has always solved problems internally, with important agreements between unions and Abi that have set the tone. Since 2000, the redundancies have all been managed by the National Solidarity Fund (financed by banks and workers) only with voluntary early retirements, without a single euro from the state budget, which have allowed the sector the voluntary exodus of tens of thousands of bank employees and at the same time the birth of the FOC financed by the entire category (280,000 employees) which allowed 40,000 hires even when the banks closed their balance sheets at a loss. If trade union relations in Abi have always been profitable, concrete and innovative, they cannot become a brake just because other sectors lack political foresight, professionalism and creativity. It will not be some inevitable jealousy between some directors that will create problems in the renewal of this contract because, in the moments that count, the parties have always come together, despite a climate of great competition, in the interests of the entire sector, banks and employees. And some recent vetoes placed by representatives of foreign banks present in Italy, with responsibility and common sense, could thus disappear. On the other hand, the unions have repeatedly recognized the important and fundamental social role that Cariparma first and Credit Agricole later, with the guidance of Giampiero Maioli, guaranteed to the territories such as, for example, the bank's headquarters in Parma, built entirely in a green key and available to the region. Also because, if the negotiations were to fail and the unions were to shift attention to public opinion regarding the exorbitant size of managers' salaries, especially in such a difficult moment for the national and international economy, the leaders of the sector would pay the consequences from a political and image point of view. Also in the presence of a government which, as some recent events have demonstrated, is not willing to guarantee preferential lanes to bankers. What the other productive sectors do not want to digest is that all the demands of the banking unions are legitimate, justifiable and proven by unassailable arguments and numbers. And a possible rupture on the negotiating table would lead to a serious interruption in relations, putting at risk, as a first effect, the very survival of Abi.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/contratto-bancari-tutto-sulla-settimana-cruciale-per-il-rinnovo/ on Sun, 05 Nov 2023 11:19:21 +0000.