COUNCILLOR PAGLIA IS CATEGORIC, IN ORDER TO SAFEGUARD THE WORKERS AND THE SURVIVAL OF THE COMPANY, IT IS NECESSARY TO WITHDRAW OR SUSPEND THE DISMISSAL PROCEDURE.
No one expected it to be the decisive day for a dispute that promises to be long-winded, but from the August 3 meeting at the Emilia Romagna Region—requested by the regional CGIL, CISL, and UIL unions as soon as they learned of the layoffs—a firm institutional position emerged, fully supporting the workers' demands. A unanimous chorus was raised not only by Giovanni Paglia, Regional Councilor for Labor, but also by the Municipality and the Province of Ferrara, represented respectively by Councilor Angela Travagli and Vice President Alessandro Guaraldi.
The regional director also expressed his hope, shared by the social partners, that the Italian and European governments will soon implement legislation to address the increasingly frequent speculation by foreign funds targeting even healthy companies, as in this case.
Having established that the US fund Lone Star's position is to liquidate the company as it is not profitable enough to be profitably resold, all the stakeholders at the table agreed that finding a buyer willing to acquire Coperion and the highly professional staff of its employees will take longer than the collective dismissal procedure would require. The Italian company management itself has estimated the end of next March as a reasonable deadline to complete the current orders, a deadline that the social and institutional parties want to reach with all the staff still in force, without losing departments such as sales, which appear to have been sidelined by the’impasse current.
Not only to find the buyer, but also to verify the solidity and quality of the offer (in terms of safeguarding of personnel and permanence in the territory), the appointment of a advisor as has already happened in recent times with other “corporate crises”, a term which in this specific case jars annoyingly with the profits obtained by Coperion on the balance sheet.
Filcams Cgil, Fisascat Cisl, and Uiltucs Uil hope to receive this and other answers on Wednesday the 5th, at the next meeting with the company, which promises to be intense, also due to the strike initiatives already announced.
