Bankers, dynamic contract with the digital control room

Bankers will have a more dynamic employment contract that will gradually evolve, thanks also to the new tools devised by Abi and the unions. Such as the steering cabin on digital which "was conceived as early as 2019 and was defined with the 2023 contract, sanctioning a modus operandi," explains the president of Abi's Casl, Ilaria Maria Dalla Riva. "Abi and the trade unions agreed that this is not an observatory, a commission, but a dynamic bargaining tool whose task is to monitor, listen, and accompany the transformation brought about by technology, digital and artificial intelligence. This transformation is dictating different times, as are the customers, who are demanding the physical network, but also digital and multichannel. "The steering committee is no longer a statement, it took office on 9 October and will be a real bargaining tool," explains Dalla Riva. "It is made up of 30 members, 15 designated by the trade unions including the general secretaries and 15 designated by Abi, i.e. the Casl holders and the president, and its aim is to find shared solutions that can supplement the national contract. The current contract will expire in March, but in the meantime, 'with the steering committee we have laid the foundations for future challenges and are anticipating the themes and the path that will lead us to renew the next contract as well,' Dalla Riva continues. 'At a time in history when new models are emerging, we have accelerated the change in order to guide it, playing in advance, starting from the points of view of everyone, those of the company, its managers, the banking association, and the unions. This will lead us to new meeting points for the renewal of the next contract'.

In 2023, there were 258 thousand corporate bankers who give Abi a mandate to represent them; by the end of 2024, they had fallen to 256 thousand, 2 thousand fewer, according to Abi data presented at the Florence seminars. If we extend the observation period to 15 years, they are 87 thousand less than the 343 thousand in 2009. But they are still here and they have not been halved, wiped out by apps, algorithms, technology and artificial intelligence, as the prophecies of consultants and council presidents seemed to say just ten years ago when they spoke of an employment perimeter that would have stopped at 150,000 workers. Far from it. If there is a downward trend in jobs, it must also be said that it has now reached physiological percentages, around 1.5%, and that the generational relay has never stopped, as the four generations in the bank tell us: baby boomers who are 7%, millennials who are the most important slice with 56.4%, GenX (29.9%) and GenZ (6.7%).

This dynamic has been made possible by the instruments created within a strong Abi national collective labour contract, which applies to 286,800 people according to Cnel data on the average Uniemens flows for 2024: a figure that shows how it is a unique reference in the credit sector (together with the Federcasse contract that applies to Bcc), so much so that its application exceeds the Abi perimeter by about 30,000 workers. A leading contract in the sector, where there is no contractual dumping, and unique in its ability to innovate and in the tools it has found thanks to a dialogue that has never been extinguished, with a union that has an extraordinarily high percentage of adhesions in the bank, over 70%. Such as the Solidarity Fund and the Employment Fund. With the former, since 2001, 110 thousand bankers have left voluntarily, accompanied to retirement with a cheque equal to 80% of their salary. Entirely paid for by the companies. The real counterbalance to the exits came a decade after the birth of the Solidarity Fund, in 2012, with the Employment Fund, which encouraged 45,200 young people to join the bank.

What has changed in recent years in banking is certainly the way of working, which is more flexible and more attractive, in terms of working hours, in terms of organisational methods with smart working and the short week, also made possible by the digitalisation of services. And the professions. There is no denying that cashiers are becoming fewer and fewer, and shop assistants, drivers, and security officers, who until the 2000s were among the profiles selected in banks, have been supplanted by a tech community that is increasingly expanding in management centres as well as in branches. This has also benefited the grading, which has shifted to managers, middle managers and higher levels of professional areas to operate an increasingly advanced machine.

In 2024, according to Abi data, executives are 2.5 per cent, middle managers 43.4 per cent and professional areas 54 per cent. Read like this, these figures do not tell what they say when analysed over a longer trend: taking the last 25 years, i.e. since the early 2000s, executives have grown by one percentage point, middle managers by 14 points, while professional areas have shrunk by 15 points. Increasingly high-quality employment, characterised by continuity even in career paths, can be seen in two numbers: permanent contracts account for almost 99% and the average age is around 48 years.