On June 24, the management of Coop Cremona Po announced that, in light of what the company considers to be redundancy, 12 employees will be transferred to the Brescia store, with just 10 days’ notice, without having previously started discussions with the workers and their union representatives and without considering the significant inconvenience that this action causes to workers and their families.
Already on June 29, after receiving the first transfer letters from 4 employees and the declaration of a state of agitation (proclaimed on June 26), the unions called an extraordinary meeting in which the block on overtime and extra hours was defined and a strike was called by all the store staff for the entire day of Saturday, July 6.
FILCAMS CGIL underlines how much such a decision impacts on the economic and family management of employees.
“What we have been told is a one-sided decision that dehumanizes work.” – declares Angelo Raimondi, General Secretary of FILCAMS CGIL Cremona – “On the merits, the company has shown that it considers its employees as the goods it puts on the shelves and moves at will, thinking it can force workers to travel over 110 km a day to work even just a few hours, with a strong impact in economic terms, but also in terms of managing personal and family life and work-life balance, a decision that we consider unacceptable from all points of view.“.
The method adopted by the Ipercoop management is also an integral part of the motivations for the mobilization: “We are talking about 10% of the store staff who were informed of a unilateral decision,” – specifies the FILCAMS Secretary General – “without any respect for work and without calling the unions to find a shared solution capable of reconciling the needs of the company and those of the employees, a decision that creates an alarming precedent both for the employees of the Cremona store and for those of the other Coop stores, but also for the entire large-scale retail sector”.
“Saturday 6th July with Cisl and Uil we will be in front of Cremona Po” – concludes Raimondi – “and the mobilization will not stop until we have concrete answers in the form of actions that guarantee that those who work are recognized with the dignity they deserve”.
Meanwhile, AVS’s solidarity with the strike of the Ipercoop Cremona Po workers also arrives through a note from Paul Losco (Provincial Secretary of the Italian Left Cremona) and Andrea Ladina (Provincial Secretary Europa Verde Cremona)
“Following the company’s unilateral decision to transfer 12 workers from Ipercoop Cremona Po to the Brescia store, Cgil Cisl and Uil have rightly declared a state of agitation and called a strike for Saturday, July 6. From what we understand, the company has shown total disregard for the impact that this choice can have on the lives of workers and their families. Choices like this demonstrate how much work today requires actions that reclaim its dignity and how, today, employers too often treat their employees like numbers, like objects that they don’t care about. This is also what we need to do with battles for social justice that put a culture of dignity back at the center of work: measures such as the minimum wage, representation, income, and the reduction of working hours are not battles in themselves, but first and foremost cultural interventions that free millions of workers from the state in which today, too often and in too many sectors, they are blackmailed by companies that think they can call the shots, forgetting that those who work are first and foremost people with their own dignity, their own aspirations and their own family networks. Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra will be present at the rally to express closeness and solidarity with the action of the unions and workers and invites all those who care about the dignity of work to mobilize together with them so that this situation, already serious in itself, does not turn into a dangerous precedent throughout the territory”.
