MILAN (Reuters) – Some employees of the Italian bank BNL, a subsidiary of the French group BNP Paribas, stopped work on Monday for the first time since the 1990s to protest against the planned workforce cuts in several departments of the business.
The unions in the sector hailed in a joint statement the “great success” of this strike movement, assuring that employee participation had been high but no reliable figure was immediately available. A BNL representative declined to comment.
“The internal services of the bank were completely deserted and remained closed, like the majority of the agencies”, specified the unions Fabi, First-Cisl, Fisac-Cgil, Uilca and Unisin.
The strike call was aimed at protesting BNL’s decision to resort to external subcontractors in IT services and the “back office”, a reorganization which, according to the unions, concerns 900 employees out of a total of 11,500 in Italy.
The unions also denounce the sale to Worldline of an 80% stake in the Italian subsidiary of Axepta, which specializes in processing card payments.
(Valentina Za report, French version Marc Angrand)
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