SEA Handling, an agreement has been signed

An agreement has been reached over SEA Handling, which will make way for the new company Airport Handling, on 1 September. “We’ve reached an agreement with a very positive result,” Giovanni Abimelech, the FIT-CISL Secretary, explained as he came out of the meeting with SEA management, from the offices of Lombardy Region. “This was possible thanks to the new mandate obtained with the employees’ signatures. We involved the employees, and 15 of the 22 joint trade union representatives in SEA Handling have signed the agreement. This guarantees the full effectiveness of the agreement.”

The agreement was signed by the trade unions CGIL, CISL, UIL, UGL, FLAI, SIMPA and USB: for these unions, the agreement is the same as the one previously prepared, with the clarifications requested by many employees concerning the contribution to the sacrifices of the managers and the cuts in time off for trade union duties. Other points that were hotly contested by one group of employees were annual closing and the organisation of shifts.

“The six fewer days will be distributed over the year, so that the company doesn’t put them all in the summer period,” explained Antonio Ciraci, of CGIL Varese, who illustrated a number of modifications with respect to the previous agreement. “The workers will have the 4 days of former holidays, which will not be converted into money, as they would have been in SEA Handling, to compensate for the 6 extra days.” There are also new rules for the career promotion of employees. “We stuck to the philosophy of 4 June, but improved on it by meeting the requests of the employees halfway. The employees’ consent has also fully legitimised this new agreement.” The only trade union contesting the agreement is CUB Trasporti, who criticised it and the method used in this final phase of negotiations.

Now, the company is going to call the SEA Handling employees, who will sign their resignations from the old company and, at the same time, sign the letter of employment for Airport Handling. The new company will start operating already on 1 September. “Thanks to the contribution from the managers and the precise quantification of the economic value of the 30% reduction in time off for trade union duties, the two months’ bonus to encourage employees to move to the new company has been increased to two and a half months,” Antonio Ciraci explained.

The agreement for the new handling company, which will operate at Malpensa and Linate, was signed in the offices of Lombardy Region. “I can only express my satisfaction over the agreement reached here over SEA Handling,” said the President of the Lombardy Regional Council, Raffaele Cattaneo. “The agreement signed today has achieved the most important result, the safeguarding of all of the jobs, and it’s an excellent signal that exceeds the “no’s” in the referendum a few days ago. Now, the politicians must get back to work, with their heads down, to deal with the difficulties of Malpensa; both the region and companies need it to be relaunched,” the President concluded.