Parmalat Group signs agreement with unions

Nine years after its financial collapse, the Parmalat Group has signed a second-level agreement with company-level trade union bodies, known as RSUs. The agreement tackles health and safety, vocational training and professional development issues and will increase productivity premiums by 20%. Parmalat, a world leader in the milk and fruit juice market and part of the French Lactalis group since July 2011, planned to set out a new industrial plan before the end of spring 2012.

Background

The Italian agro-food group Parmalat was founded in 1961, initially as a group selling dairy products in the province of Parma. Its financial collapse in 2003 led to the group being held in extraordinary receivership until September 2005 (IT0411203F).

On 1 October 2005, the new company of Parmalat Spa was established. Following agreement with the former company’s creditors on a debt-for-equity swap, stipulated by the extraordinary administration, the 16 companies in the group became part of Parmalat Spa, so creating the Parmalat Group.

The main company in the group, Parmalat Spa, was launched on the stock market on 6 October 2005.

In December 2005, Parmalat sold its ‘oven division’ which, in Italy, included four plants and 400 employees.

The group is currently a world leader in the milk and fruit juice market. It boasts 69 plants worldwide and two research centres. In 2010, it employed approximately 14,000 people and declared net sales of €4.3 billion. In Italy, the group has 12 plants and a workforce of about 2,000 people.

Since July 2011, Parmalat Spa has been 83.3% controlled by the French concern Lactalis.

About the agreement

This is the first supplementary agreement reached since the French group bought Parmalat Spa. It was signed on 22 March 2012 by the group, assisted by the Unione Parmense degli Industriali, and by company-level trade union bodies known as RSUs (unitary workplace union structure). National representatives of the Italian Federation of Agroindustry Workers (FLAI-CGIL), the Italian Federation of Agriculture, Food and the Environment (FAI-CISL), and the Union of Italian Workers in Agroindustry (UILA-UIL) were also involved. The agreement will be valid for four years from January 2012 to December 2015.

Main points

• Industrial relations: The agreement confirms two levels of bargaining at group and plant level; the role of the already-existing joint technical commissions; and the role of the advisory committee, composed of six trade union representatives (three of the national secretaries of the Fai, Flai and Uila and three of the national coordinators of the RSU). The agreement states that the committee will monitor various steps of the industrial plan, which the group will present before the end of this spring, and create the necessary conditions to set up a European Works Council.
• Environment: The agreement pays particular attention to the environment. It states, among other things, that the environmentally friendly disposal of industrial waste is necessary if enterprises want to be considered as a future supplier.
• Health and safety: A joint working group is to be set up that will analyse shift work and evaluate the risks of ‘stressful work’. It also foresees training courses on health and safety and lays out a pilot project which, on an annual basis, will offer premiums to plants that introduce the best health and safety initiatives.
• Organisation of work: ‘Lean Manufacturing’ will be introduced into the production process in order to reduce inefficiencies and there will also be a new organisational model based on a Product Unit system. The Joint Committee will review the entire system of training and professional development, to align it with the new industrial system. The first revision phase should end by 31 December this year.
• Work–life balance: In order to better reconcile working and private lives of employees, the agreement foresees, among other things:

1. flexibility regarding starting and finishing times and extra flexibility for parents when their children start attending kindergarten;
2. a number of agreements with bodies, cooperatives and associations that run kindergartens, offer babysitting services and assistance for the elderly and disabled;
3. specific training courses to help people get back to work after being absent due to illness, or maternity or parental leave.

• Salary: An increase in productivity premiums of €950 over four years. These premiums will be monitored in order to adjust payments so they are equal across all Italian production plants. To achieve this, a joint working group will be set up which will have to make formal proposals by 31 October 2012 for the revision of the index parameters.

Reactions

Mauro Macchiesi, National Secretary of Flai-Cgil, believes that the new industrial plan will lead to ‘important developments that will guide the group in the future’. He has given his reassurance that his union and the group’s RSU will monitor the situation ‘in order to guarantee that the commitments undertaken will be maintained’.

The General Secretary of Fai-Cisl, Augusto Cianfoni, has said that the standardisation of productivity premiums in the group is a strong indication of the level of solidarity between the workers of Parmalat in the various production plants in Italy.

Tiziana Bocchi, the National Secretary of Uila-Uil described it as:

a good agreement that will be important during the financial crisis we are going through, and it represents an important guarantee for the workers involved, a clear framework in which to apply the new industrial plan.

Vilma Rinolfi, Cesos