27-10-2016

AlmavivA Contact on the meeting at the Ministry for Economic Development

Rome, 27 October 2016 - AlmavivA Contact is keeping a close eye on the Government’s position and actions on the issue of the structural crisis of the call center industry.

The Company hopes that it will be able to ensure full compliance with the relevant rules, and especially with regard to the relocation of activities in non-EU member countries and the serious competition distortion effects caused by the application of prices well below the minimum labor costs set out in the national collective agreements, in order to produce real effects on the still seriously unbalanced reference market.

At this stage, it is essential to reconcile the possible evolution towards a regulated sector and the situation of AlmavivA Contact, which, over the last four years, has halved its profit – most of which as a result of the relocation of other companies in non-EU member countries – while maintaining its workforce substantially unaltered (over 9,000 employees, of which 8,000 hired under permanent employment contracts) and suffering significant and constantly growing losses.

This situation is no longer sustainable, with the ongoing support of the shareholders and other Group companies, and is forcing the shareholders to act immediately in order to safeguard the Company’s operations and the highest possible number of jobs.

AlmavivA Contact’s market reshaping, as an alternative to the layoffs currently under way, requires a strong new strategy capable of making a clear break with the past.

A framework of consistent actions, in support of the transitional phase, which, until the Company achieves a new economic balance, must provide for the suspension of several labor cost components; retraining programs, to enable workers to apply for other jobs; long-term redundancy schemes; ready implementation of the agreement regarding quality and individual productivity; investments in technologies that are functional for the new operational models.

All these elements should be viewed against the backdrop of a new industrial challenge, characterized by the activation of “workplace participatory democracy” plans.

A policy, in line with the most advanced European experiences and with issues that are widely debated at the institutional level, in this and other countries, aimed at valorizing, indeed enhancing, the uniqueness of the business plan, through the definition of joint bodies vested with specific competences regarding certain matters; agreed decision-making procedures regarding the application and results of the management plans; procedures for ensuring the presence of workers in the supervisory boards or board of auditors; worker profit-sharing schemes (also considering the Group’s international concerns, which are twice as big as AlmavivA Contact alone in Italy); the possible privileged access of workers to the Company’s stock.

A new plan for AlmavivA Contact, aimed at achieving and accomplishing the necessary actions of a structural nature, which, however, must be contextualized over time, as the only credible alternative to the reorganization plan that has been launched, which requires the responsibility of a joint commitment by the management, the workers, the unions and the government.

The time has come when, faced with a market in the throes of a deep crisis, over 15 companies have closed down in the last 18 months alone, all the stakeholders must decide either to respond with useless and, indeed, harmful assistance-based policies, or with different and participatory business projects.