National collective agreement renewed for rail workers

In June 2005, Italy's Fs railway group signed a new national collective agreement with trade unions representing rail workers. As well as providing for pay increases, the agreement deals with maintenance, security and logistics issues, with the aim of supporting the company's development plan.

On 23 June 2005, the national collective agreement on pay for workers in the railway sector, which had expired 6 months previously, was renewed. The new agreement was reached after several months of negotiations, two sectoral general strikes and on the eve of another strike that would have caused many problems to train traffic. The agreement was signed by the Gruppo Fs (former Ferrovie delle Stato) and the General Transport Federation (Agenzia Confederale dei Servizi e dei Trasporti Connessi, Agens) and by the trade unions representing railway workers affiliated to Italy’s three main trade union confederations - Federazione Italiana Lavoratori Trasporti (Filt-Cgil), Federazione Italiana Trasporti (Fit-Cisl) and Unione Italiana Lavoratori (Uilt-Uil) - as well as by the independent trade unions representing railway workers - Orsa, Ugl-Ferrovie, Fast-Confsal. The agreement covers Fs employees and all other employees working in the railway sector.

The pay provisions and the commitments of the partners on issues such as maintenance, logistics, and security, aimed at supporting the company’s competitiveness and development, makes the agreement an important achievement and marks the recovery of industrial relations in the sector.

The agreement sets an average monthly gross pay increase of EUR 100 which will be paid in instalments in September 2005 (EUR 40), January 2006 (EUR 30) and September 2006 (EUR 30). Moreover, in August 2005 workers will receive a one-off payment (una tantum) of EUR 320 to cover the period between the expired agreement and its renewal and, starting from July 2005, the company will no longer deduct EUR 3 from workers’ pay to cover sickness allowances.

The agreement, besides the economic aspects, deals also with some other issues such as rolling stock material maintenance, security and logistics, by envisaging a series of thematic negotiations, at national and local level, to support the development of the productive capacities of the single sectors and support the development plan of the Fs group.

• Maintenance of rolling stock material: the agreement acknowledges the strategic importance of the maintenance process to keep high levels of quality, security and punctuality of the service provided and established to carry on all maintenance activities, previously externalised, within Fs workshops and plants, by fully exploiting them thorough possible changes in working time schemes and personnel reorganisation. The partners decided to meet before October 2005 to discuss how and when to bring back in house the activities externalised in 2005.

• Security: the partners confirmed the introduction, before the end of 2007, of the new technological system for the control of train gears the Sctm (Sistema di Controllo Marcia Treno) and the Scs (Sistema di Supporto alla Condotta) and decided to identify ad hoc solutions to avoid negative drawbacks on machine operators.

• Logistics: the partners decided to define solutions able to increase Trenitalia transport and efficiency capacities. The logistics activities will have to be re-designed in the new operative context in order to be able to support the company’s competitive capacities at national and international level and to increase profits by 10% between 2005 and 2008.

The trade unions are very satisfied with agreement signed and believe that 'this agreement is an important step forward which could constitute the turning point necessary to improve the industrial relations system of the Fs Group which had severely worsened during the last few months'. Nonetheless, they are convinced that 'the agreement by itself will not be enough and that the company’s commitments should be followed by concrete actions'.

Vito Tedesco, secretary general of Fit-Cisl underlined that the agreement signed is the results of an important investment on concertation and on the company’s development: 'the important maintenance process will be, once again, carried out in-house, opening new perspective for the company’s plants and workshops and new impetus has been given to logistics'.

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