Trade unions against Unicredit: action to be taken if the ban on remote working is not reviewed

“We trust that the company will reconsider its position” on the suspension of remote working and, “if not, we reserve the right to take all possible action at our disposal to curb these abuses, including the proposal to extend branch opening hours, the de facto restriction of smart learning, staff shortages, workloads and ever-increasing operational and commercial pressures’. Thus, in a joint statement, the coordinating secretariats of the UniCredit Group trade unions respond to the letter in which the bank’s chief executive Andrea Orcel announced the immediate end of remote working for front-line managers, a measure which, from January, will be extended ‘essentially to all female and male employees’.

‘We have expressed our total opposition to this unilateral decision,’ reads the leaflet issued by the workers’ representatives, who also consider ‘this company initiative to be unacceptable both in substance and in approach’. ‘At a time when workers are calling for ever-greater flexibility,’ the trade unions continue, ‘we expected – as we have long maintained – the scheme to be extended to include the retail network, as has happened in other banking groups, and certainly not a drastic reduction in remote working.’ ‘All workers – including those working on Mondays and Fridays – have contributed to this group’s extraordinary results (22 consecutive record quarters)’, they assert.