The numbers in the Vibac dispute are changing, but going from 116 to 90 redundancies is not a victory, quite the opposite, because if the verbal announcement two months ago was considered almost like a provocation, the formal communication of the dismissal procedure collective hearing received on Monday evening is yet another blow to dozens and dozens of workers and their families. This will be discussed promptly at the corporate crisis table already convened by the Molise Region for tomorrow morning, indeed, nothing could be easier than that it was promoted precisely in view of this comparison. As can be seen from the letter sent by the company to the social partners, with the list of 90 employees attached. Tomorrow everyone will sit in the Region.
«Vibac Spa in Termoli produces adhesive tape, starting from plastic film supports (neutral and printed) and paper. The production of the tape sector had to undergo a progressive and significant decline, from 2017 to 2019, going from over 735 million of m2. from 2017 to 572 in 2019, to adapt to decreased market demands for commodity products, increasingly subject to imports from countries with more competitive production factors; we were therefore forced to open, in early 2020, a collective dismissal procedure in the Vinci plant, which made it possible to recover a certain economic balance in that plant. The Termoli plant allows the production of these higher volumes, the only ones , moreover, which have allowed, in the past, economic management. From the end of 2021 onwards, however, market conditions in the tape sector have worsened further, due to the concomitant action of the pandemic, and subsequently, almost without interruption, of the war in Ukraine and the Middle East, with the consequent increase exponential increase in energy costs, the resulting inflation, and the increase in interest rates to try to deal with it. The result of all this was a sharp decrease in demand from all industrial countries, from a part, and, in Italy, an equally strong increase in production costs, aggravated by more expensive bank credit; on the other hand, the competition from companies located in other countries – and in particular in France, Spain, Vietnam and Turkey, little affected by the increase in energy costs, as well as in South East Asia, as well as in China given the huge public funding provided to companies – has become much more aggressive than in the past. Consequently, starting from 13 January 2022, in the Termoli plant we benefited from a period of ordinary layoffs, until 9 July 2022, but the subsequent start of the war, and the consequent increase in energy costs, forced us to request a period of extraordinary redundancy pay; and although almost all the planned efficiency measures had been implemented, the prices at which the Termoli plant was able to produce continued to be uncompetitive, because in the meantime the market crisis had worsened further. In fact, tape production had to suffer a significant decline in 2022, going from 632 million square meters. produced in 2021 to the 239 million m2 produced in 2022 to adapt to decreased market demands. Therefore, when the redundancy fund ended and the staff had to be paid in full, the plant’s losses would have been unsustainable; it was therefore inevitable to open, in February 2023, a collective redundancy procedure, in order to proceed with a significant reduction in the workforce. Having concluded without agreement the union phase of the aforementioned procedure, during the subsequent administrative phase it matured, thanks also to the intervention of the Region, the possibility of accessing the Redundancy Fund for employment transition, with the aim of limiting the impact of the crisis on the company workforce; a union agreement was therefore signed on 3 July 2023, in which the collective redundancy procedure was declared concluded; 116 workers at risk of redundancy were identified, who would have access to the Gol program referred to in article 1, paragraph 324, of the 1. 11th 178 of 2020; the company reserved the right to adopt, within the period of use of the salary supplement for occupational transition, all the measures permitted by law so that the establishment, at the end of the aforementioned period, can have recovered an economic balance. Since July 2023 to date the market situation has not improved, on the contrary it has worsened further, nor is there any prospect of improvement in sight, both in terms of higher sales prices and volumes. Added to the continuing contraction of the market, which is unable to absorb the plant’s production at objectively practicable prices, is the extreme difficulty in supplying raw materials, due to the well-known difficulties of passages from Suez, with the result that, at times, it was not possible to respond to the (even sporadic) opportunities offered by the market, due to the impossibility of promptly receiving the necessary raw materials. It is therefore essential to proceed with a significant reduction in the workforce employed in the Termoli plant, to bring it back to a condition of economic equilibrium at the end of the current layoff period. In particular Vibac, which already produces its own masking paper for the automotive and industrialists, has decided to maintain the production of masking tape at the Termoli plant, so as to enter sectors in which it will be able to acquire market shares which, albeit for low volumes, on which the staff to be kept in service is calibrated, can give continuity of consumption for the new production structure. Therefore, at the Termoli plant, the production of masking will be maintained on Line 6 (impregnation machine) and on Line 5 (coating machine), part of the cutting department and the further so-called indirect departments which will, together with the aforementioned production lines, downsized in the staff on the basis of lower volumes of work. As for the measures traditionally alternative to collective dismissal – i.e. solidarity contracts and the use of part-time work – they are unacceptable because they are intrinsically unsuitable for achieving the indispensable final result, i.e. the reduction of the cost industrial per unit of product: in fact the reduction in hours, to correspond to the declared redundancies, would have to affect the entire staff of the Termoli plant, with insurmountable organizational and management difficulties. But, above all, the plant would work even more at a reduced capacity, with an even higher incidence of fixed costs per unit of product; which is the exact opposite, in fact, of the result we must obtain to recover the company’s economic balance. Furthermore, the solidarity contract is an instrument limited in time, which therefore implies recovery forecasts, for which, at the moment, there are no objective elements, while part-time is not a measure that can be activated unilaterally by the company and would require, in order to be concretely hypothesize acceptance by each individual employee, and to the extent individually proposed. On the other hand, it is not even possible to hypothesize measures to absorb the redundancy through the use of the so-called. demotion; this measure, in fact, would not allow the costs of excess personnel to be reduced, as is indispensable, and in any case the market would not be able to absorb the production surplus. The implementation times of the collective dismissal procedure will be, obviously in compliance with the law, as short as possible, because the economic situation of the company. The writer does not allow any extensions, under penalty of risk of bankruptcy. The company remains available for joint examination within the times and in the manner established by law”.
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