Over 7,500 applications were sent in a couple of days to work in Italy. Air Transport, the new airline that will take over from Alitalia on 15 October. On the online platform activated for the recruitment of personnel, ten thousand requests could arrive by the end of the week – according to current projections -, more than double the employees that the newco intends to have by 2025 and almost four times compared to the 2,800 employees expected at take-off.
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The 35 required profiles
Pilots, flight attendants, technicians, staff: all 35 requested profiles responded to the various open positions. Most of them currently work for Alitalia. In fact, even the employees of the old company in order to be hired in Ita must first send their application on the dedicated site. This is because the European Commission has imposed that any transition between the two companies must take place in clear discontinuity – including contractual ones – in order to be able to give the go-ahead to the Italy Transport Air operation. And so the Alitalia employee who is selected by Ita will first have to resign from the airline in extraordinary administration. In short: officially no preferential lanes.
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Who is applying
But who is applying the most? According to a provisional count on the applications sent, at least 937 are for the role of pilot, 2,267 as a flight attendant and more than 4,202 for the role of administrative, technical, etc. personnel. As announced by Ita at the start of operations, the company aims to take off with 2,800 employees: 1,550 of crew (pilots, flight attendants), about 1,250 of ground personnel. This means that the required number of crew for the first time was already exceeded shortly after the platform was activated. All employees must have an anti-Covid Green pass.
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The Cigs hypothesis for the excluded
What happens to Alitalia employees who will not go to Ita? The company currently has around 10,000 permanent employees who have been on layoffs for months which expire on 21 September. The three commissioners have opened another procedure to request a twelve-month extension (from 22 September 2021 to 23 September 2022) of the zero-hour cigs for 7,086 employees: 6,877 from Alitalia and 209 from Cityliner, the regional division of Alitalia. These numbers will be the subject of trade union negotiations. Among the proposals on the table there is also that of extending the layoffs for those who will not be hired by the newco until 2025 – trade union sources explain to the Courier service – that also the year in which the horizon of Ita’s industrial plan ends.
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The trade union negotiations
And it was precisely with Ita that the unions also met on Friday 27 August after first meeting on 25 August ended with several controversies. Almost everyone was there (Filt Cgil, Fit Cisl, Uiltrasporti, Ugl Air Transport, Usb, Anpac, Anpav and Anp), but not the representatives of Assaereo, the employers’ association present in the Ita invitation, but from which Ita asked out. The distances remain also in the second round of consultations – where the president Alfredo Altavilla and the managing director Fabio Lazzerini were not present – and at this point we look at the face to face on Tuesday. The newco wants to close the negotiations on the new employment contract as soon as possible for this other meetings with the social partners – according to what the Courier service – are also scheduled for August 31 and September 1.
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