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Leonardo is a candidate to be the first truly great testing ground in manufacturing for the reduction of working hours, through bargaining and good relations with the union. The largest Italian manufacturing company, in defining the new supplementary contract (2024-2025-2026) with the trade unions, has traced the tracks on which the dialogue on bonuses, time and welfare will develop, which are increasingly factors of employer branding . Especially in a group that will include 5,000 professionals including engineers, data scientists, data analysts and cybersecurity experts in the next two years. All highly sought-after professionals and for whom “it is essential to characterize the job offer with conditions that improve the attractiveness and make the company competitive, at a time when one cannot think of bringing on board the best talent imagining that only qualified for job security», says Antonio Liotti, human resources manager of the group which, in Italy, has 31,000 people (51,000 worldwide, with a particular presence in the USA, the United Kingdom and Poland), of which 12,000 are engaged in productive activities.
The reduction of hours
The theme of the reduction of working hours has been fueling a lively debate for many months, which “was set up imagining that the beneficiaries could be the same people who, starting from the pandemic, have used smart working, which has spread on a large scale, initially as a response emergencies and then as a more structured measure of work-life balance – interprets Liotti -. At Leonardo we have an agreement that allows those who carry out remote tasks to work in smart working 8 days a month which can go up to 10, under particular conditions. However, thinking of other measures for those who can already work in smart working would have increased the gap with those who work in production and it was not possible to take advantage of this possibility. To avoid further polarization, we have decided to shift the focus of the corporate population potentially affected by new measures that affect the time factor. With the trade unions we have begun to think about a reduction in hours in areas where smart working is not usable. The commitment is to explore experimental solutions for the remodulation of working hours, also with a view to reducing them, applicable in production realities, according to criteria, sharing methods and purposes that will be shared in advance during the renewal of the supplementary company contract”. If the mechanism technically needs to be defined, the track has however been identified and is that of «a pact which provides for an increase in productivity against which the company would participate by making itself available for a reduction in working hours. The idea is to start with experimentation in targeted production areas in some of the largest divisional sites», continues Liotti.
Salary recovery
The renewal of the 2021 supplement started in a context of strong discontinuity with the past, due to the debate on the time factor, but also due to an inflationary dynamic – and a geopolitical situation – that had never been seen before. The question of wages has come up noisily. “We have chosen to tackle the economic side immediately, identifying solutions, including structural ones, to contrast wage erosion, generated by the biting inflationary dynamics, which has been underway for about two years now”, Liotti affirms. In this context, however, «just when we were discussing the economic part we received the new Ipca indexes from Istat which significantly increased the tranches of the renewal of the national collective labor agreement. What we were trying to do at the company level, the national contract has therefore done. To avoid an unsustainable concentration of costs in the same years, we have thus decided to reformulate the discussion, increasing the performance bonus to a lesser extent for 2023 and 2024, and giving signs of more sustained growth for 2025 and 2026, years not covered by the current National Collective Labor Agreement which expires in 2024″. Thus the collective superminimum will increase by 40 euros in 2025 and by 63 in 2026, while there will be no further adjustments for 2023 and 2024. The result bonus, however, will increase by 250 euros in 2023, by 350 euros in 2024, by 700 in 2025 and 1,400 in 2026. These are values that add up to the performance bonus which, in a group where former companies with specific treatments have merged, is highly diversified and varies from a minimum value of around 1,500 euros, recognized in some companies of the group, up to the maximum value of around 5 thousand euros of the helicopter division, the former AgustaWestland.
Consolidation of the premium
In the discussion on the award, it was also agreed to start «a path of consolidation, with a view to harmonization, because coming from one rather than another company means that today employees have different variable treatments – explains Liotti -. Taking 3,300 euros as a threshold, in the discussion we will verify the possibility of transforming the excess part into an ad hoc super-minimum salary, adopting a conversion criterion of 85%, whereby 100 euros of variable will correspond to 85 of fixed. A part of the variable would therefore be consolidated to arrive at a single result for all Leonardo’s workers”.
The improvement of welfare
In the discussion of Leonardo’s new supplement, space will be given to the time factor, the wage question, but also the improvement of welfare on which at least three signals will arrive. The first could be the introduction of a life insurance policy for everyone. The second was an intervention on supplementary pensions, increasing the share of the company contribution which today is 2%: the trade union request is to bring it to 3% and the company has given full willingness to deal with the subject, even if the quantitative aspects still need to be defined . The third would focus on supplementary health care in a system dynamic, through improvement solutions for Leonardo’s workers that are consistent with the Metasalute category fund. All to raise the level of the pillars of their welfare on health and social security.