Railways agreement seeks to boost efficiency

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In February 1998, the sectoral trade unions and Ferrovie dello Stato, the Italian national railway, signed an agreement aimed at increasing the company's efficiency, productivity and competitiveness.

On 6 February 1998, after one year of negotiations, the three confederal transport trade unions - Filt-Cgil, Fit-Cisl, Uilt-Uil and Ferrovie dello Stato, the Italian national railway, signed a deal to renew the collective agreement for railway workers, which had expired on 31 December 1995. Four main objectives were achieved through the agreement:

• guaranteeing a single bargaining unit for railway workers;

• adjusting pay in line with inflation;

• strengthening the company's industrial relations system; and

• recognising the importance of labour as a resource to increase the quality of the services provided.

These objectives were achieved thanks to some important innovations which have made a considerable contribution to containing labour costs and to reducing the effects of reorganisation on employment levels:

• the degree of articulation between the different levels of the industrial relations structure has been strengthened, with the regional level being responsible for human resource management;

• new seasonal flexibility in working hours has been established through the creation of an individual "time account" (conto tempo) - a kind of time bank in which daily and weekly overtime can be saved;

• to solve the problems of managing personnel surpluses, the social partners have created a special fund to conduct active labour policies (training initiatives, outplacement etc), which will become operative on 2 April 1998;

• a new organisation of the professional and managerial staff area (Area Quadri) has been introduced, to encourage a more direct relationship between professional skills, organisational positions, results achieved and pay;

• a voluntary complementary pension fund has been established. Both employees and the company will contribute 1% of pay, while employees will also contribute 18% of the money paid into their Tfr (trattamento di fine rapporto) end-of-service allowance severance pay scheme. The pension fund will become operative on 1 October 1998;

• the existing complementary health insurance fund will be implemented before June 1998, and the company and employees will pay ITL 140,000 each per year; and

• minimum pay rates will be increased by ITL 100,000, backdated to July 1997, and by ITL 70,000 from May 1998, while the productivity bonus will be increased by ITL 30,000, backdated to May 1997.