Apple: the new smartphone is here, and Italian workers are on strike

Apple has announced the arrival of the new generation of iPhones in Italian shops, whilst staff have called a strike. In the wake of the launch of the Cupertino-based company’s first foldable smartphone, Filcams CGIL, Fisascat CISL and Uiltucs have called a national strike at Apple Retail Italia, which has 17 stores – including those in Piazza Liberty in Milan and Via del Corso in Rome – and 1,600 workers. They will down tools on 18 September, just as the new iPhone arrives in Italian shops, in a bid to break the deadlock in negotiations over recruitment, workloads and the conversion of fixed-term contracts to permanent ones.

According to a statement issued by the trade unions, the staff meetings held on 7 September revealed “a situation characterised by increasing workloads, staff shortages and ever-greater pressure on productivity, partly as a result of the introduction of new organisational processes. Store staff have been enduring a level of pressure for some time now that cannot be further exacerbated.”

This is precisely why the trade unions have proposed a series of measures to tackle organisational difficulties, without, however, receiving any structural responses. To overcome these challenges, the trade unions have for months been calling for ‘a jointly agreed recruitment plan, the conversion of a proportion of fixed-term contracts to permanent ones, and a voluntary increase in part-time hours, to be tailored to the needs of individual shops and with clear timelines’.

During the successive meetings, the company showed no willingness to accept the proposals, despite having announced an increase in fixed-term contracts and bringing forward the related recruitment. For the trade unions, this solution ‘does not address the structural nature of the problem: the duration of fixed-term contracts is now approaching seven months. The launch of the new generation of iPhones now marks the start of a new phase of intense activity for Italian stores as well. Precisely for this reason, the Italian trade unions believe that the multinational must promptly address the organisational challenges and ensure sustainable working conditions’.