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Liberalisation and privatisation of the Italian telecommunications market has led to the creation of many new companies in the sector, creating a situation of confusion in collective bargaining. In June 2000, the national trade union and employers' confederations reacted by signing an agreement which regulates pay, conditions and industrial relations for all the companies operating in the sector. The agreement is the first example of a new form of bargaining organisation that the trade unions are seeking.
Until the 1990s, telecommunications services in Italy were a state monopoly, managed by Società Italiana per i Telefoni (SIP) a state holding company belonging to the IRI group. SIP's organisation underwent many changes over recent years and was renamed Telecom Italia, prior to privatisation in the late 1990s. The telecommunications market is also undergoing liberalisation, first concerning mobile telephones and then fixed-line telephones. Liberalisation will be completed in 2000, with the extension of the possibility for competing companies to manage the "last mile" of the Telecom Italia network, which means reaching consumers directly.
The enlargement of the range of telecommunications services provided to individuals and companies had led to the creation of many new companies which provide services using the Telecom Italia network. The proliferation of such companies, created by firms already operating in other sectors, has posed the problem of the representation of both workers and employers (TN9912201S). When Telecom Italia was a state monopoly, the company's collective agreement also represented the national collective agreement for the entire sector. Now, the wage levels and employment conditions provided for by the Telecom Italia agreement are considered as very onerous by the new companies, which have generally refused to apply it to their workers. Trade unions too have preferred to continue to apply the same collective agreements which already cover the firms which have created the new telecoms companies. Tim (mobile telephones) and Tin.it (one of the main Italian internet service providers) apply the Telecom Italia agreement. Omnitel (a fixed-line and mobile telephones company created by Olivetti and now controlled by the German-based Mannesmann) applies the metalworking agreement. An unusual situation was brought about the creation of Wind (a company providing fixed-line and mobile telephone services, controlled by Enel, the state-owned electricity generation and distribution company). Unable to apply the same agreement as for Enel workers, and in the face of a dispute with the trade unions, which were unable to resolve the problem of representation, Wind decided to have a company agreement negotiated directly with the central union confederations. A similar situation has arisen at Blu, a telecoms company created by the Società autostrade motorway company.
The Confindustria employers' confederation has also had to deal with the problems arising from the creation of the new telecoms companies and their organisation and representation. Telecoms companies affiliated to Confindustria have established a sectoral association, Federcomin, though it is not authorised to represent them in collective bargaining.
In order to resolve the bargaining confusion within the sector, Confindustria and the three main trade union confederations, Cgil, Cisl and Uil, decided to negotiate a collective agreement for the whole industry. Confindustria negotiated on behalf of employers, given Federcomin's non-bargaining role, while the union confederations negotiated on behalf of the employee side, in the light of the fact that telecoms workers are not organised by a single sectoral union within each confederation (eg Telecom Italia workers are represented by the telecommunication workers' unions and Omnitel workers are represented by metalworkers' unions).
The agreement
A new collective agreement for the entire telecommunications sector was signed on 28 June 2000 after a long series of talks (IT0003147N). It represents the means to move from company agreements to a genuine agreement for the whole telecoms sector. The agreement can be applied to all the companies which already operate in the sector, and to all companies which enter this sector (see below). The scope of application is very wide, as the agreement may potentially be adopted by all companies providing telephone services, data transmission services and networking services - a growing sector which, at present, employs more than 300,000 people.
The negotiators of the new agreement tried to adopt the common regulations already present in the various national collective agreements applied by new telecoms operators without worsening them, and at the same time to foster greater flexibility in employment relations and working time. The main points of the deal are as follows.
- Weekly working time is set at 40 hours, but companies will be able to modify weekly hours by communicating the change only four days in advance. Weekly hours may be averaged out over a six-month reference period, with a maximum of 48 hours per week and 12 hours per day. The agreement provides for this average 40-hour week to be reduced by 72 hours a year. Workers may take these 72 hours as paid leave in periods of two hours or more, or they can decide to receive pay for the hours instead. The agreement provides for the establishment of an "individual hours account", in which workers may accumulated overtime hours and subsequently take them as leave. The operation of this scheme will be defined by June 2001 by a specific joint committee.
- "Atypical"employment contracts (fixed-term contracts and temporary agency work) will be permitted at levels exceeding those provided for in the existing agreements. Atypical workers may constitute up to 30% of the overall workforce, if the company is located in the south of Italy (Mezzogiorno) and 26% if the company is located in the central and northern parts of Italy. This percentage does not include part-time employment contracts and can be increased by a further 10 percentage points through company bargaining. Companies will be able to use atypical contracts in order to deal with situations such as personnel shortages due to holidays, training leave or courses, particular periods of production which need particular skills not available in the company, and peaks of activity due to new orders or to the launch of a new product.
- Job-sharing- when an employer signs an agreement with two people to cover a single job - and telework are regulated by the agreement.
- The structure and the content of the agreement can be adapted according to the employment needs of the sector. A joint "observatory" will monitor the sector's evolution and the performance of the bargaining structure. The observatory - which will be composed of 12 experts, and will set up specific committees - will assess the soundness of the bargaining system and identify the possible need for adjustments.
- The industrial relations system created by the agreement provides workers' representatives with a right to information at national, local and company level. At national level, information will have to be provided on the future prospects of the sector, employment trends and competitive needs. At local level, attention will be focused, in a more limited way, on employment trends, while at company level information will be provided on investments, technological organisation and their organisational consequences, the environment, vocational training, working time and the improvement of the service provided.
- A joint national committee will be entrusted with the management of vocational training. This committee will analyse training needs and develop targeted projects.
- The agreement confirms the bargaining levels established by the July 1993 national intersectoral agreement (IT9803223F), which entrusted national sectoral bargaining with the general regulation of employment conditions and pay minima, and company bargaining with specific conditions and the negotiation of performance-related pay.
- As regards pay, national minima have been defined, taking into account the minima set out in the national metalworking agreement, which coincide with the lowest rates currently applied in telecoms companies. A monthly average increase of ITL 80,000 over the next two years has been agreed. Performance-related pay will be negotiated at company level.
- The agreement provides for a job classification system based on seven occupational levels. Given the continuing development of the sector, the occupational profiles will be verified and updated in future. A specific national joint committee will be responsible for this matter.
The new national collective agreement for telecommunications signed by Confindustria and the three union confederations can be applied by companies in the sector on a voluntary basis. This application must be negotiated with the trade unions and Rsu workplace employee representative bodies in each company. These negotiations should harmonise the existing pay and conditions in the firm with those provided for by the new national collective agreement.
Reactions
The trade unions are very satisfied with the new agreement, which they see as protecting workers from "social dumping" - ie competition among companies on employees' working conditions. Pier Paolo Baretta, the confederal secretary of the Cisl confederation, expressed the hope that "this agreement will lead the way towards a different bargaining approach, able to aggregate wide areas, reducing the segmentation of the present bargaining structure." Mr Baretta believes that the deal is very innovative because is "the first genuine guarantee agreement, based on the minima and regulations common to all the workers of the sector". Nevertheless, trade unions are worried that organisational conflicts among the various sectoral trade unions which currently represent telecoms workers could be resumed.
Rinaldo Fadda, vice-general director of Confindustria, invited the trade unions not to exploit the fact that the agreement confirms the existing two-tier structure of bargaining, which the employers' confederation is currently seeking to modify (IT0006268F). Mr Fadda also underlined "the capacity of understanding and of analysis of Cgil, Cisl and Uil towards the situation and especially during the preparation and the negotiation of the agreement".
Gianfranco Viaggiano, the manager responsible for general affairs and trade union relations at Omnitel, commented in a positive way on the conclusion of the agreement, but he preferred not to commit himself about the application of the accord at Omnitel, which at present applies the metalworking agreement.
In late July, Telecom Italia negotiated with trade unions a set of four "harmonising" agreements, applying the new sectoral agreement. These enshrine the principle that existing pay and conditions will be applied to workers already in employment, while the new national collective agrement will be applied to newly recruited workers. This seems to be the path that will be followed by all the main telecoms companies.
Commentary
The new national collective agreement for telecoms is highly innovative in terms of the Italian industrial relations system. The situation brought about by the proliferation of telecoms companies following the liberalisation of the sector has posed new problems for Italian trade unions.
The first problem concerns disputes among sectoral trade union organisations about the representation of workers. These problems are common in "anglo-saxon" "countries where" trade union structures often do not match the boundaries between different sectors, and unions have thus developed procedures for resolving demarcation disputes. In Italy, trade unions are organised on sectoral lines, with sectoral trade unions able to represent just one sector and forbidden to organise workers in other sectors. The Italian approach has been unable to manage the new phenomena of outsourcing and the creation of new operations in innovative sectors by companies which have traditionally been involved in other sectors, as has been the case in telecoms. The problem is still live, but has relaunched the debate on the restructuring of Italian trade unions along broader sectoral lines (such as industry, services or public employment). For example, Cisl's textiles and chemicals sectoral trade unions have started a merger process, while the debate is still open in the other two confederations.
Another subject which emerged during the debate among the social partners over the telecoms agreement concerned the reform of bargaining structures. Confindustria wants to reduce the current two-tier bargaining structure to a single level - the national sectoral level or the decentralised level. Trade unions are very cautious, but are still in favour of the present bargaining structure.
At national level, the prevailing attitude is to widen the scope of national collective agreements, to extend them to more than a single sector and consequently to reduce their importance and substantive contents. Trade unions would like to fix common basic rules and rights at national level for the main bargaining areas and to limit national wage bargaining, whose only aim would be to maintain the purchasing power of salaries, and strengthen decentralised wage bargaining.
The telecoms agreement is just the first result of a long round of negotiations which will start during the coming months and which will aim at reaching a tripartite agreement on the flexibilisation of the labour market and the reform of bargaining structures. (Domenico Paparella, CESOS)