Air Italy sent 1,322 dismissal letters attributable “to the union procedure for collective dismissal for cessation of activity”, which the company had initiated on 23 September last. An act that Confael’s Air Transport secretary, Mario Clemente, defines as “expected but incomprehensible and unacceptable”. “Although Italy has received billions of euros from the European Union for the recovery of our country – underlines Clemente -, 1,322 workers begin the new year with a letter of dismissal. These are the Air Italy workers for whom Confael Transport Aero requests that the same measures be applied as for the workers of other companies which are, in fact, already closed, such as unfortunately Alitalia and Norwegian ».
The response of the trade unions
“Unfortunately the moment we feared and that we tried to avoid until the end has arrived, the dismissal letters of the 1400 Air Italy workers have left, in the total indifference of the institutions”. This was stated jointly by Filt Cgil, Fit Cisl, Uiltrasporti and Ugl Transport Aereo asking for “immediate intervention by the Government to block the procedure and thus avert this real social tragedy that is taking place”. «Several times in recent months – the unions continue – we have asked for a decisive intervention to resolve the situation with concrete proposals that have remained unheard. With a provision in derogation from the Budget Law, in fact, it would have been possible to extend the layoffs to all 1,400 workers of Air Italy also for next year, regardless of the decisions taken by the company. We then continue to reiterate the importance of establishing a national retraining and relocation pool for air transport personnel, which is essential in order not to waste the enormous professionalism of the workers not only of Air Italy, but of the entire sector “.