Sorrentino (Cgil) on RadioArticle1: the CGIL campaign against the simplification decree goes on, next week the hearings in Parliament. “We will present a reformulation that confirms the Statute”
No agreement, no control, the new CGIL campaign has begun, the objective of the simplification decree which leaves companies a free hand on the remote control of workers. “We are also doing it through the use of flash mobs – he explains Serena Sorrentino to the microphones of RadioArticle1, during the episode of Italia Parla (podcasts) – and therefore to explain not only to workers, who are already more or less informed and forewarned about such an important issue that concerns their professional activity, but also to people and citizens in general the scope that the authorization from part of the government to companies of the use of the worker's personal data which can take place through the control of work tools, which is the biggest novelty from a substantial point of view that we see in the formulation of article 23 of the legislative decree on simplifications and which modifies article 4 of the Statute”.
Thanks to the decree - explains the CGIL manager - "companies will be able to use the worker's data, stored through the tools that the worker uses for his professional activity, without union agreement. This, in addition to being in contrast with a series of European rules, regulations and recommendations, is also in contrast with the philosophy with which the privacy guarantor has repeatedly exercised: from the 2007 guidelines to the latest provisions, up to the many deontological codes on the use and processing of data”.
It is no coincidence – continues Sorrentino – “the guarantor intervened immediately saying that it is necessary to pay close attention in the meantime on the use of data and on the authorizations that must be determined and then on the separation of the processing of data concerning personal life from those concerning work activity. We obviously now have the first objective which is to modify the decree, we will have the hearings next week in the competent commissions, where we will present a reformulation of article 23 which substantially reconfirms article 4 of the Statute, albeit taking on the needs of the technological innovation but borrowing the same principle. It is not that as technology has progressed it is possible to enable a more invasive control with respect to the work activity”.
For the CGIL, “the instrument that remains the cornerstone is that of the trade union agreement, because in that case you can balance the needs. Let's take an example. To fire you, to demote you, to change your position, to move from one physical location to another physical location: these elements of guarantee and minimum protection for the worker must be regulated and the person who can do it better, because closest to the place of work, it is obviously the company union representative or the Rsu, where we manage to elect them. And then the control of the territorial directorate of work and of the ministry on the effectiveness of the level of protection of male and female workers. These are the elements on which we will ask the competent committees to amend Rule 23”.
In those workplaces where the union fails to reach a complex situation is looming, for employees, but according to the CGIL confederal secretary, with the appropriate amendments to article 23 of the decree
“the rule can also evolve in a sense of greater protection of the worker. Meanwhile forcing the companies, even in the absence of a trade union agreement, to file the agreement with the local labor directorate, because at that point the ministry always becomes the subject that can control even where there is no union. Furthermore, where there is no union in the company, the most representative union at the national level for that territory can intervene, in the sense that there are instruments of protection”.
"Very often - continues Sorrentino - there is no distinction between tools that the worker uses for work and tools that are also used in part for personal life, therefore first of all it is necessary to restore the protection towards the treatment of data concerning personal life. But we believe that even the control of data through work tools must have areas of limitation and discipline. The company cannot use all the data it stores for any purpose. The famous technical-organizational reasons are a bit vague. What the company can use and for what purpose, when we talk about remote control, must be well regulated”.
When asked what remote control has to do with innovation, simplification and the creation of new jobs which, in theory, should have been the final goal of the Jobs Act, Sorrentino replies without too many doubts: “It is consistent with the general setting of the Jobs Act, which unilaterally places at the disposal of the company a series of tools which facilitate it with respect to the management of employment relationships”.
