Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Gepin Contact, a call centre operator, is to dismiss about 450 workers out of 600, in its sites of Rome and Casavatore (Naples).
The group has been a subcontractor of Poste Italiane, the Italian public provider of postal activities under universal service, since 2003.
Following legal proceedings involving the company owners, imprisoned for bankruptcy fraud in February 2015, Gepin Contact was acquired by a new group, Samo Italia. However, the company relies mainly on the activities carried out for Poste Italiane and workers are already on Wages Guarantee Fund.
In the meantime, Poste Italiane listed a 40% share in the Stock Exchange and decided to reassign the call centre service through an invited tender. The subcontracting is now in process of being awarded, but Gepin Contact was not amid the invited competitors and should cease its service by the end of June.
As a consequence, the management of Gepin contact announced 450 redundancies, involving also employees of Uptime, a subsidiary company of Gepin Contact, created by Poste Italiane through a transfer of business.
Workers went on strike against the decision and issued demonstrations in front of the Ministry of Economic Development and of Poste Italiane headquarters. Unions and Assocontact, a sectoral employers’ association, stated that the new assignment envisages a price inadequate to cover minimum wages set out in the sectoral national collective bargaining agreement. Trade unions claim that the tender should be withdrawn in order to set an adequate price for the service and make sure that the social clause is applied, therefore granting that redundant workers are hired back by the new provider.
The Ministry of Economic Development announced that it will start negotiations and seek to involve Poste Italiane with a view to achieving a shared solution.
Eurofound (2016), Gepin Contact, Internal restructuring in Italy, factsheet number 86501, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/86501.
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