Alitalia, employee protest reaches Palazzo Chigi
Alitalia: ok EU on discontinuity, Ita from August
Alitalia-Ita, close agreement with the EU with 4500 employees
Alitalia, Franco: Ita will have fewer routes and a smaller fleet
Share
May 27, 2021 Alitalia will pay only 50% of employees' salaries tomorrow. This was communicated by the three extraordinary commissioners of the company in a communication to employees. "Following yesterday's approval of the loan for Alitalia, and pending the time necessary for its actual disbursement - reads the communication - we will in any case pay 50% of salaries, with value tomorrow May 28". "We are working to accelerate the payment of the remaining 50%, which will be credited as soon as we have evidence of the timing of the disbursement of the resources allocated to the company", conclude Gabriele Fava, Giuseppe Leogrande and Daniele Santosuosso.
Yesterday the EU green light came for the new Alitalia which will start by August with cuts to the fleet and staff: no more than sixty planes, employees will be halved (with about 5,000 redundancies) and there will be fewer routes. Handling services (all ground assistance) and maintenance will remain outside the perimeter and must be managed by a company not linked to the new company. Only the aviation part will be transferred to Ita and the new company will be able to participate in the tender for the Alitalia brand but also for ground services and maintenance.
Agreement with the EU: fewer planes and fewer employees
After a long and painful negotiation, the Italian government and the European Commission reached a common understanding on the key parameters to guarantee the economic discontinuity between Ita and Alitalia. This was announced yesterday by the European executive at the end of the meeting in Brussels between the executive vice president, Margrethe Vestager, who is in charge of Competition, and the Minister for Economic Development, Giancarlo Giorgetti, with the Minister of Economy, Daniele Franco , in video link from Rome. Brussels therefore asked for a clean break with the past. The Commission also announced that it is completing its investigation into bridge loans of 400 and 900 million euros granted between 2017 and 2019 to Alitalia.
"The technical path for the birth of a sustainable company begins, the new Alitalia which will have to be operational as soon as possible, reasonably in August", commented Giorgetti, who is still with his feet on the ground: "We have made some steps forward but it's not over: there are other technical steps and more, but certainly today is an important step towards solving the problem ".
The priority now is "to guarantee operations for the summer season" then "there will be the new company that will start under the conditions that are being defined", Giorgetti clarified. And the decisive game will be played on these in the coming days, starting with the brand on which a tug-of-war was going on between Rome and Brussels. "The new company will be able to participate in the tender for the brand", assured the head of Mise.
The Minister of Economy, Franco, had anticipated before the meeting that the perimeter of Ita will be "more contained than Alitalia in terms of routes, fleet and related activities but consistent with the plan of the new company and capable of to ensure development, including employment ". With the aim of "returning to the country a national air transport carrier capable of ensuring internal connections and outside national borders, of guaranteeing the development of operations and employment by operating at conditions of profitability such as to generate an economic return for the public shareholder ".
Skeptical unions: usual ballet figures, strike on 18 June
"We are the usual: a ballet of figures that worries the workers and meanwhile the Alitalia affair has not yet seen a positive conclusion". This was declared by the General Secretaries of Filt-Cgil Stefano Malorgio, Fit-Cisl Salvatore Pellecchia and Uiltrasporti Claudio Tarlazzi, adding that: "It is not possible for Alitalia to remain a police station since 2017, with fluctuating versions on the number of aircraft and therefore redundancies. all this time passes; the summer season, the most profitable, has already begun; the cash register is burned; the salaries do not arrive regularly; the competition eats up the spaces of the national airline. In short, the situation continues to worsen and we continue to learn the news from the media despite the fact that we have already requestedactivation of a control room with the four competent ministries to find the solutions necessary for the relaunch of the carrier ".
Malorgio, Pellecchia and Tarlazzi conclude: "It must be clear once and for all whether or not we want a national airline that can match competitors from other European countries and which does Italian economic interests without doing social butchery, leaving thousands of female workers out of work and workers. This also taking into account the objectives set out in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan which aims to relaunch the Italian economy: a project that is difficult to implement if the NewCo starts off with its wings clipped ". All these reasons are at the basis of the strike scheduled for June 18, together with the additional problems that afflict the workers of the entire air transport sector.