Telecom Italia: Job cuts on ice
TELECOM Italia has suspended planned job cuts under pressure from a government hoping to minimise union conflict as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pushes austerity measures for the flagging economy.
“Telecom Italia has agreed to withdraw the layoff procedure. Now we have a 15-day period of intense negotiations,” Labour minister Maurizio Sacconi said after a meeting with the company as well as its unions yesterday.
Heavily indebted Telecom Italia had announced plans to cut 3,700 jobs by June 2011 and a total of 6,800 positions between 2010-2012 as part of a turnaround plan.
The government decided to intervene after unions held a strike last week over the cuts.
Telecom Italia chief executive Franco Bernabe said Sacconi had promised to find the means to reduce the social impact of the cuts.
Unions have said Telecom Italia, which is controlled by a consortium headed by Spain’s Telefonica, was dramatising the crisis to justify layoffs and should not axe jobs while paying dividends.
Italy’s official unemployment rate is less than the Eurozone average at just under nine per cent but far fewer people work in Italy as a proportion of the working age population than in France or Germany, putting a strain on public finances.