Company RESTRUCTURING, production drops, permanent crises, cessation of activity or company branch, bankruptcy and liquidation, arrangement with creditors, cancellation of orders and commissions, mobility with outsourcing. There are many reasons that the union listens to from the companies in the course of negotiation. The consequences: ordinary and extraordinary layoffs, layoffs. Between Milan and the province, five thousand jobs are at risk when work resumes in September, according to the assessment of the secretary of the Chamber of Labour, Onorio Rosati. And there is talk of situations that have matured if not this summer, at least in recent months, without going back to the mists of time such as Alfa in Arese, where the last 120 workers are waiting, after numerous extensions of the fund, to know their fate.
In some cases, an entire industry suffers. Marvecs and X-Pharma want to get rid of all their employees, 900 and 376 respectively. These are informants, people who visit doctors to advertise the house's drugs. Accustomed to salaries between 40,000 and 60,000 gross euros a year, they have to return service cars, computers and mobile phones. Piergiorgio Tagliabue, general secretary of the Femca Cisl, explains: «They discount two things. The continued cuts in drug prices, understandably implemented by the government. And the fact that there are no new patents, linked to the previous one because there is less convenience». In the summer, Marvex laid off 400 people, 200 have already left with the incentives "but they still risk bankruptcy", Tagliabue insists.
As for X-Pharma, the German ownership wants to put an end to the activity of the Milanese branch on 1st September.
"There are contacts with subjects interested in taking it over - says Claudio Bettoni, secretary of the chemists of the CGIL - but the relaunch comes from a credible industrial plan". At the beginning of the year alone, in fact, X-Pharma hired about a hundred informants from the other German Merck.
Critical situation also at Eutelia, which has a thousand employees in Pregnana Milanese and has asked for the extraordinary redundancy fund for 400. The union has buffered with solidarity contracts (fewer working hours and less wages for everyone), "but the future remains full of unknowns", says Andrea Bellisai of the Fim Cisl city secretariat: "We need to evaluate a general framework in which the demand for cash on the part of companies with fewer than 50 employees is growing and a giant like Siemens announces 17 thousand layoffs worldwide.
By mid-September we should have clearer ideas in Milan as well». For now, the estimate is conservative, but only for the large numbers involved: "Here Siemens has thousands of employees, after several spin-offs the accounts have to be redone a bit but there could be three thousand", observes Bellisai. Remaining with the metalworkers, Innse wants to close the plant in via Rubattino with 50 workers. Maria Sciancati, Milanese secretary of Fiom CGIL, says: "On 2 September we are summoned to the Ministry of Economic Development, hoping for a buyer." Which could come from Brescia, where the large presses produced in Lambrate are needed.
Difficult times for Jakob Muller (cafe machines), which has made 62 out of 104 employees redundant.
In the chemical sector, medium and small companies in the rubber and plastic sector are suffering. Similar problems in commerce, where there is also a striking example. The Auchan of Cinisello, at the center of controversy years ago for an extension unwelcome to the residents, leaves 100 of the 800 employees at home. They are not layoffs, but non-renewals of fixed-term contracts. "And therefore - explains Luigino Pezzuolo, the Milanese secretary of the CISL category - they are not counted among the places at risk
