Italian unions divided over agreement

ITALY:  Metalworker unions in Italy are divided over the recent signing of a national agreement for the renewal of the national contract set to expire at the end of 2011.

The draft agreement, signed by IMF affiliates FIM-CISL and UILM-UIL on October 15, is now being discussed by workers at the local level and will be considered by the National Assembly of workers' representatives of FIM-CISL and UILM-UIL in Bergamo on November 6. A referendum by all FIM-CISL and UILM-UIL members is taking place from November 25 to 27, 2009.

The scope of the agreement includes minimum wage increases, income support fund, training, health and safety initiatives and new rules on collective bargaining, subcontracted labour and part-time work.

The agreement is not supported by IMF affiliate FIOM-CGIL, arguing that the agreement should be submitted to all workers who will be covered by the agreement.

The division between the unions stems from a disagreement on the rules for collective bargaining for a national agreement and on rules for the submission of the agreement reached with the employers to all the workers it will apply to.

As FIM General Secretary Giuseppe Farina explains in an interview with the press, this negotiation is being carried out under the new collective bargaining rules set by the agreement signed at the national level by the national trade union centres CISL and UIL and not by CGIL. It is the first time in Italy that a separate agreement provides the collective bargaining structure for workers.

FIM General Secretary Farina indicated that FIOM were encouraged to be part of the negotiation, but FIOM refused. FIOM states that before the signature, it requested a stop to the negotiations, with the aim of achieving mediation between the two platforms and to decide together the ballot among workers. Earlier, FIOM and 250,000 metalworkers went on strike in defence of maintaining a jointly negotiated national collective agreement, see previous IMF news item here.