Dedalus and Arianna

In Europe the only thing we have in common, even today, is the currency, since contracts (some don’t even have a national contract), protections, and the way of practicing trade unionism are very different from country to country.

I have been a delegate since 2002. I have witnessed many development stages of my company on a European scale and then, from 2008 to 2012 I experienced a degrowth scenario with sites closing down and entire production branches being sold, and acquisitions, even during the crisis, of new activities and even entire groups.

Our annual meetings in the EWC last 4 days: the first 2 are dedicated to training and preparing questions, while during the remaining days we have presentations of the company’s activities (which has 62 business units), including the financial report. At the end of the presentations, we have a debate with questions and answers.

In these years we have always had a lot of information, what has been missing is consultation, which we are still fighting for with the management. There have been cases where extraordinary meetings were supposed to be held, but they weren’t. The Select Committee is very active, with at least 4 meetings a year with the European management.

The true potential of the EWC is the exchange of technical and cultural information during the meeting to see how the company operates in the different countries, as well as spreading this information on a local level. This is not an easy issue in a context characterized by 5 production sites plus offices.

In Europe the only thing we have in common, even today, is the currency, since contracts (some don’t even have a national contract), protections and the way of practicing trade unionism are very different from country to country.

As far as Directive 38/2009 is concerned, even if it has been greatly improved, it doesn’t include obligations or sanctions like national contracts: therefore it is ineffective in many ways.