BNL, Goitini wants to sweeten the unions by offering cookies. Read to believe

18 February 20222 years ago babelfish

The latest (very sugary) news in the BNL bank of the French group Bnp Paribas. Italics by Andrea Mainardi

Of the apocryphal “they no longer have bread, let them eat brioche”, the take off Marie Antoinette will free herself more. False the saying. It is true that pastries across the Alps are an art, but using sugar and butter risks getting messy in internal communication operations. Thus the opinion of many employees of BNL, the former Treasury bank, which since 2006 has come under the control of the Bnp Paribas group and speaks the language of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the one who probably created the "qu'ils mangent de la brioche ”attributed with a lot of imagination to the finished queen as we know.

She did not recommend brioches, Bnl-Bnp Paribas led by the CEO, Elena Goitini, but she gives cookies to employees to thank them for their collaboration at the start of the 2022-2025 business plan.

The bank collected two strikes for this plan in less than a month – on December 27 and January 24 – and in a bank that had not heard of complaints for thirty years. Great participation of employees, principals in the main Italian cities, even in front of the Bank of Italy and the French embassy. Arms folded everywhere along the boot.

However, Bnl-Bnp thanks the employees with the sweets. It does so by citing January 24 as the starting date of the Single Network, "one of the main transformation projects of the Plan". Giving away cookies. With a photo letter signed by the chief executive officer and general manager. The announcement of the cadeau specifies that the cookies will be available in the office.

BNL specifies that the dessert is precisely to "celebrate" with the employees the launch of a plan that at least many do not seem to like. The attention to the unions seems to have gone the wrong way. Despite the good intentions of the company, the weather has by no means subsided. New unrest is on the horizon. However it is breaking.

The national secretariats of Fabi, First Cisl, Fisac Cgil, Uilca and Unisin released a joint note two days ago in which we read that "after five days of useless reflections, the company returned to the negotiating table with the same provocative attitude that he has held since the beginning, proposing once again to the union the overcoming, if not the violation, of rules, laws and contracts, aimed at masking with a fictitious posting what remains a transfer of workers always opposed by the union , which has tried in every way to find an alternative solution to the transfer of workers: a possible way through the use of a real posting that would have allowed the creation of the partnership while keeping the workers within the company perimeter. We are therefore moving towards a definitive break ”. Without a turnaround, new disputes are announced "and the season of lawsuits will begin".

Cookies are not served. On the contrary. Although BNL has ordered them to a worthy Italian non-profit organization whose mission is the training and job placement of young disabled people.

The governance of the institute is aimed at employees using the tones of the Èclair recipe: "We are giving you some biscuits that express the ambition of solidarity and inclusion that we want to characterize every day". Since he is Bnp, he will forgive Moliére if we do not turn to him. But the phrasing reminded the employees of an Italian Fantozzi who accompanies his daughter Mariangela to collect the Christmas panettone in the meeting room on the 18th floor of the Olympus of mega directors. In full debate with the unions, still in the trenches, offering biscuits seemed out of tune. Not for the biscuits, of course, the acronyms declared a break in the negotiations.

But why so much turmoil between employee representatives and the bank? The commercial will not shine as a macaron from the Parisian pastry boutique Pierre Hermé, but closes 2021 with a sparkling profit before tax of 376 million, up 3.7% compared to the previous year. The bank of the Bnp Paribas group recorded a gross operating result of 899 million. Okay, down 2 percent. The brokerage margin grew to 2,680 million (+ 0.3%) with an interest margin down by 4.9% due to the impact of the low interest rate context only partially offset by the effect of the growth in credit volumes. And commissions increase by 8.3% compared to 2020.

But last year it also closed with indications that the unions put in motion: the reason for the strikes is to reject the industrial plan presented by Bnl which provides for the closure of 135 branches – in favor of an expansion of home banking and consultants for top customers – and the mobility of dozens and dozens of workers. With the risk, according to the acronyms, of a very heavy company impoverishment.

For the trade unions, the BNL intends to outsource and expel from the company perimeter, through the sale of company branches to external companies, about 900 workers. In more moves. There is the Pantheon project with Capgemini (French) to which BNL has decided to sell a business unit of 250 employees with IT skills. BNL guarantees Italian governance in an srl, registration in the ABI, based in Rome and guarantees, including the possibility of returning following any employment tensions – but only in the event of a waiver of appeals against the transfer by workers – that should emerge during the ten-year duration of the contract. Further step on the back office. The transfer of various company branches involving over 540 workers of the institute is foreseen. Thetransition is from BNL bankers to Accenture spa . Prior to this, it was the sale of 80% of Axepta (a company in the payments branch of Bnl) to the French Worldline and the transfer of 110 employees to the buyer.

These matches have greatly dissatisfied the bankers. The biscuit operation at the end of January did not sweeten the palates, the files remain on the table. The union flags are preparing to return to the street between via XX Settembre and piazza Farnese.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/bnl-goitini-vuole-addolcire-i-sindacati-offrendo-biscotti-leggere-per-credere/ on Fri, 18 Feb 2022 07:49:47 +0000.