30-10-2014

AlmavivA: surprise at Rome City Council stance on 060606 service

Rome, 30/10/2014 – We read with great surprise the statement dated 28 October 2014 from Rome City Council in reference to the call for tender for the information service 060606, in response to the issues raised by AlmavivA Contact and its workers regarding the principles behind the awarding of public service tenders.

In the statement from the capital's administration, there is no trace of a responsible institutional reply to the critical issues raised, which go above and beyond the result of a single call for tender. On the contrary, the position is one of intolerance in response to the legitimate concerns of the workers and of significant indifference to the risks relating to the maintenance of employment levels in companies which have contributed to the development of the area, and continue to do so.

We have stated, and wish to reiterate, that by setting the decisive criterion as the most economically advantageous offer, Rome City Council would award the contract for the 060606 service at a price that does not cover even 80% of the pure cost of managing the service, as, until this point, AlmavivA Contact has done on the basis of the reference CCNL [Italian collective labour agreement].

We have stated, and again reiterate, that the assessment of merit and experience has been reduced to a factor of marginal value, all but irrelevant with respect to the significant weighting given to the guide-price discount. We have stated, and once again reiterate, that without providing for local resources to carry out the service, it remains to be seen whether the service will continue to be executed in Rome or elsewhere, in a sector exposed to severe delocalisation, with a direct impact on employment, competition, safety and personal data protection.

Faced with this serious crisis situation, which is suffocating the CRM sector, and caused by an unstable regulatory environment, the message being sent from above seems to suggest that respecting the minimums set by the labour agreements and the benefits corresponding to the length of service of our workers is too high a cost and that, as a result, there is no longer room for a socially and economically sustainable business enterprise in Rome.

AlmavivA Contact is a leading company in the CRM sector, that will not delocalise, – as declared in its articles of association; it employs almost 9 thousand people on a permanent contract, 2 thousand of whom in Rome. It does not intend to abandon its workers to their fate. However, this commitment alone is not enough to protect the work without concrete action on the part of the relevant institutions to ensure realistic criteria for the public tender system and full application of the existing rules to protect free competition.

We have set our legal representation the task of ascertaining the lawfulness, also from a criminal perspective, of the case presented in the statement of 28 October 2014 which appeared in the press and which states that, even before the conclusion of the tender procedure – given that the legal assessment of the "winning company" is still ongoing – Rome City Council has already had an "initial meeting" with the company potentially to be awarded the 060606 tender, during which the hiring of AlmavivA Contact employees was discussed.