Unipol, dialogue with trade unions starts with the bonus

After the tensions over smart working and the short week, the Unipol insurance company and the company trade unions are turning the page and reopening dialogue on a constructive basis, with the agreement on the variable company bonus (Pav). The agreement signed for the defiscalisation of the bonus represents something more than a mere technical signature, reached following the dictates of the Revenue Agency. As the unions (Fna, Snfia, Fisac, First and Uilca) explain in a note to workers, it also has political significance. First of all internal, but certainly also external due to the phase that is opening in Ania for the renewal of the national collective labour agreement: the company, despite having left the association, continues to apply its contract and will participate in the negotiations that will open by the summer. The contract expires at the end of 2024 and the unions are finalising the drafting of the claim platform.

Turning to the details of the agreement, as stated in the initialled text, in June the company's workers will receive an average bonus of EUR 1,850, calculated on the reference level, the 4th, to be spread over the others. The 2024 company bonus comes after six out of seven targets have been reached. The EUR 1,850 derives from the sum of the EUR 1,500 base and the EUR 350 that had been introduced last year as an additional quota, linked to the disposal of holidays and the performance of compulsory training 'ex lege', i.e. on safety, management model, anti-money laundering and privacy. A further important aspect of the agreement is the guarantee of the same disbursement criteria for both 2025 and 2026, with the possibility of choosing between the cash mode with preferential taxation, as provided for by the regulations, and the welfare mode through the Wellbee platform, without tax deductions. This is an agreement that takes workers to 2026, but still leaves them waiting for the organic renewal of the company integrative contract (Cia), which is a decade old.

It is precisely the Cia that could be the venue for tackling the chapter on work organisation where the thorniest issue will remain smart working. In recent days, in Milan, attending the Fabi National Council, which called together the country's major bankers, the company's chairman, Carlo Cimbri, reiterated his position on the issue: 'Like all innovations, they are never positive or negative in absolute terms,' said the manager. 'We discovered remote working for an emergency, the Covid, then we returned to normality. If the question is whether smart working can be the new normality I say no, I am convinced it cannot. Can it be a tool to achieve balances to facilitate certain career paths? Yes'. Going into detail, Cimbri recalled the strong debate currently underway on how to eliminate the career and salary gap affecting women, on whom falls 'the burden of a family and children. It's a load that doesn't go away in a short time, and which means that many women are then forced to make a choice: children or career. Can we now use smart working to support women who want to have a career? Why not? But it has to be a focused use, companies are relational entities and this social dimension of the company cannot be replicated by working remotely'.