Ground-breaking agreement signed at Telecom Italia call centre

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After some months of negotiations between management and trade unions, in May 2004 a collective agreement was signed at Atesia, the call centre for Telecom Italia (Italy's largest telecoms operator). The deal aims to achieve greater job stability, by gradually changing the status of all 4,350 'employer-coordinated freelance workers' at Atesia so that, in the great majority of cases, they can become employees proper. This change to the employment relationship has been made necessary by a 2003 labour market reform law (the 'Biagi law'), which abolishes employer-coordinated freelance contracts. The unions have welcomed the agreement as the first of its kind, and see it as a blueprint for similar agreements in the future.

In Italy, outsourced call centres employ 180,000 people, of whom 65% are women and 10,000 work on freelance contracts. Because call-centre services are not regarded as their core business by companies, they are outsourced to specialised companies that make large-scale use of 'atypical', non-subordinate employment contracts. In order to regulate the sector, on 3 March 2004, the main trade union confederations - the General Confederation of Italian Workers (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Cgil), the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori, Cisl) and the Union of Italian Workers (Unione Italiana del Lavoro, Uil) - and the National Association of Call Centre Services (Associazione Nazionale Servizi di Call Center, Assocolcenter) employers' organisations signed the first national collective agreement covering workers on 'employer-coordinated freelance contracts' (a status midway between dependent employment and self-employment) in outsourced call centres (IT0403203F). However, the deal did not apply to Atesia, the services centre for the fixed and mobile telephony network of Telecom Italia (as well as for third parties), as Telecom Italia (Italy's largest telecoms operator) is not among the 32 companies affiliated to Assocolcenter.

Atesia, is the leading company in Italy's call centre and market research sector and its main shareholder is Telecom Italia. A distinctive feature is the prevalent use made of employer-coordinated freelance workers (collaboratori coordinati e continuativi) (IT0308304F), some 4,000 of them, while only 177 of Atesia workers are dependent employees.

Because the March 2004 agreement did not cover Atesia, the trade unions opened talks with the Telecom Italia group. The negotiations, which involved the Cgil, Cisl and Uil confederations and their sectoral unions - respectively the Communications Workers Union (Sindacato lavoratori della comunicazione, Slc-Cgil), the Federation of Entertainment, Information and Telecommunications Workers (Federazione dello spettacolo dell’informazione e delle telecomunicazioni, Fistel-Cisl) and the Italian Communications Workers Union (Unione italiana lavoratori della comunicazione, Uilcom) - concluded on 24 May 2004 with the signing of an agreement. The deal was also made necessary by the labour market reforms introduced by legislative decree no. 276/2003 (IT0307204F), which provided for the abolition of employer-coordinated freelance work and sought to curb the indiscriminate, if not fraudulent, use of semi-subordinate labour.

The agreement

The new agreement covers all 4,350 of Atesia’s employer-coordinated freelance workers, whose contracts will be extended until December 2004. From the early months of 2005 onwards, their employment relationships will be converted - by means of company-level deals to implement the agreement and harmonise regulations - into various types of contract which in the majority of cases (70%) will be for dependent employment, with a view to job stabilisation. The industry-wide agreement for the telecommunications industry will then be applied - in all its aspects - to the call-centre workers. The workers' place of work will remain in Rome.

The agreement is all the more important because it also reorganises the company's structure. The 4,350 workers will be divided between two companies, with the hiving off of Atesia’s fixed-telephony branch to Telecontact, the group’s call centre owned entirely by Telecom Italia. Of the workers transferred to Telecontact, 600 will have apprenticeship or 'work-entry' contracts and 750 will have fixed-term 'staff leasing contracts' (contratti di somministrazione di lavoro) - formerly temporary agency contracts (IT0307204F). As regards the workers remaining with Atesia, which will continue to run the mobile-telephony business (Tim) and whose controlling share will be taken over by a major national operator in the sector (the identity of which is not yet known), 1,100 workers will have apprenticeship contracts, 550 will have work-entry contracts and 1,350 will be 'project workers' (IT0404303F) hired to deal with fixed-term orders. The project workers will have priority should they apply for open-ended vacancies arising in the company.

Future agreements implementing the agreement should define the types of workers concerned, who will be hired on varying types of contract depending on their age (apprenticeship contracts for workers aged under 29, work-entry contracts for those over 50). However, on conclusion of the duration stipulated by law for each type of contract, the workers will be hired by the company on an open-ended basis.

Reactions

Both the employers’ organisations and the trade unions have welcomed the agreement. For Confindustria, the country's largest employers’ organisation, the deal is one of the first to apply the 2003 law reforming the labour market (the 'Biagi law') and proves that the legislation offers numerous opportunities to reconcile the flexibility needs of firms with the protection of workers. Indeed, because the law directs a large number of precarious workers towards structured forms of dependent employment by introducing training-based contracts (apprenticeships) and forms of regulated and bargained flexibility (work-entry contracts), it is seen by Confindustria as benefiting worker protection and employment creation as well as promoting the selective 'regularisation' of numerous forms of 'grey' employment (such as employer-coordinated freelance contracts).

For the general secretary of Cgil, Guglielmo Epifani, the Atesia deal is a good agreement because it shifts the call centre of Italy’s largest telecoms company away from the 'logic of precariousness', and shows that when it is the social partners that agree on such issues, the aim is always quality and job stabilisation. In Cgil’s view, the agreement marks an important turning point, because it shows that call centres and their activities are no longer considered peripheral to companies’ interests, with the consequent large-scale use of precarious workers. According to the general secretary of Uil, Paolo Pirani, the deal is the first major agreement achieved since approval of the Biagi law and will open the way for other agreements in future.

Commentary

The agreement signed by Telecom Italia and the trade union confederations is undoubtedly a ground-breaking deal which will serve as a model for similar situations. The most important aspect of the agreement is that it enables flexibility to be reconciled with worker protection, in that it enables 3,000 workers to switch - gradually by means of apprenticeships, work-entry contracts, fixed-term staff leasing contracts - from atypical forms of employment to standard ones.

The increase in the costs to the company will be limited and gradual, besides complying with the logic of a business policy centred on valuing the 'human factor' and on service quality. Finally, the agreement again confirms the crucial importance of collective bargaining - in this case at company-level - in specifying a sharp distinction between dependent employment and forms of work often used unlawfully to conceal subordinate employment relationships (Livio Muratore, Ires Lombardia).