Alitalia looks to the abyss after the «no» of the staff to the restructuring
Alitalia, the airline that for 70 years was the flag company of the transalpline country, is condemned to a controlled administration process. This was decided by its board of directors after its workers decided on Monday night to reject the restructuring plan that the company had agreed with the Government to deal with the limit situation. The unions had signed the company’s proposal, which involved firing some 1,000 workers from a workforce of 12,000, lowering salaries (up to 20% and an average of 8%) and the profound reformulation of the business, which leads Alitalia To a model close to a low cost. All this, of course, with a new injection of some 2,000 million of its owners: banks Unicredit and Intensa Sanpaolo and Etihad. But the workers’ vote has rejected it with a majority (65.7%) «no» and pushes the company to the abyss of its third bankruptcy in 20 years.
As it happened in this type of voting lately, nobody thought that it could win the opposite option to that posed in the name of stability. But the workers opted for a protest vote against what they considered a blackmail based on the sharp premise of «or cuts or bankruptcy.» So as the afternoon of yesterday advanced and the numbers insisted on opposing the company and the unions, the Government met urgently to study this new scenario.
Alitalia, therefore, does not have many departures. That is why the workers who have now chosen to reject the restructuring plan are putting a pulse on the company, because the meaning up to the date of their election would be to multiply redundancies by five. It is not a measure of pressure for the government and the direction of the airline to make an effort and reduce their claims in terms of salary cuts and dismissals. One tends to think that the State will not let fall a company that shares its name with the one of the country and it contains the Tricolor banddera in its logo. But the reality is that the scenario was not planned. «At the moment there is no plan B and I do not think that seeking a public investment in the company again is a good idea,» says Andrea Giuricin, professor of transport economics at the Bicocca University in Milan. In fact, the hesitations in the model and the failed mergers cost the Italians from 1998 to 2008 about 4,000 million euros. A money that did not serve to renew the company, but to pay the payroll of its then 20,000 workers. So the company ended up breaking down in 2008. In this case, if the company breaks down and heals, a buyer may appear with a company with a different business model. The shrinkage, according to industry sources, would transform a company of 22 million passengers a year into one of 12 million.
