CROTONE – About two hundred employees of the Abramo CC office in Crotone occupied the hall of the municipal council to keep attention on their dispute in which more than a thousand jobs are at risk throughout Calabria and to ask the Ministry of Business for immediate convening of a crisis table.
Abramo CC is under extraordinary administration and the sword of Damocles of job loss hangs over the employees, more than half of whom are in Crotone: the Tim contract which has allowed us to keep alive what is left of a company that employed around 6000 people. A one-month extension of the order has been announced, but there are no certainties also because the Extraordinary Administration ends on 7 August and if there are no orders the company goes into liquidation and all hope for the employees ends.
A branch of the company was sold to a new com 30% owned by Enosi Holding srl and Steel Telecom srl At 70%, the purchase proposal, however, involves only 229 workers.
For this reason, after the protests of recent days, the meetings at the Ministry and the Calabria Region, the workers who see the specter of dismissal ever closer have decided to meet in a permanent assembly in the council chamber of the Municipality of Crotone to urge the Ministry to convene a table on the Abraham dispute alone. The climate is tense because for many employees, Abramo CC’s income is their only income. There are also families in which husband and wife work in the company and for this reason they have also brought their children to the boardroom.
“If politics is not capable of organizing and finding solutions, if it is not capable of protecting us – said one of the front end operators – let them go home because we are going home too and we are going to eat at the minister’s house if you don’t find a solution. We don’t want welfare, no layoffs. We want jobs.”
In the days following a meeting between unions and the ministry, the one-month extension was announced. “We will stay here – adds one of the team leaders – until we have answers. Let us know if this renewal actually exists, if we are working as has been said, to find a solution and above all that the ministerial table be convened for the Abraham dispute alone, because today we are almost at June 30th and it has not been never convened this table and it is a bit scandalous because for other disputes, much smaller ones, whatever was done”.
Even the mayor of Crotone, Vincenzo Voce, brought the solidarity of the Administration by also placing banners outside the municipal building: “These women and these men – said Voce – do not want welfare. They want to work. Today they rightly raise the level of attention. I have put this matter at the top of the list of problems even if the Administration does not have the skills to resolve it. These workers are the weakest and most fragile part of the community. This month’s extension that has been announced serves to put the cards on the table: governor Occhiuto, I’m not the one who has to defend him, is working: there are a couple of projects in the field, it takes some time, and Tim must understand that while waiting for these projects to materialize, continuity must be given to everything.”
