22 September 2008

Alitalia: Courageous employees

Photo: IlSole24Ore

At last. The extraordinary commissioner, Augusto Fantozzi yesterday decided to open a public competition for the purchase of the Italian flagship. It’s what he should have done before. It’s really the moment to say: “Better late than never.”

It was a duty-bound choice, an obligatory route that we of Italia dei Valori have been requesting for some time. In my opinion, the choice to put Alitalia on the market and the responsibility that the pilots, the flight attendants and the land-based staff want to take in becoming part of the management, shows that a solution can be found.

Yesterday, after the government’s umpteenth declaration of closure towards every other solution to save the company apart from that proposed by Cai, a closed position reinforced by the Ministers Sacconi and Matteoli, I had stated that the Berlusconi executive must not blackmail the workers and behave with Alitalia like the mafia people do with their victims.

The government’s insistence in continuing with this way of behaving constitutes a disturbance in the sale as big as a house and it has evident repercussions for civil, accounting and criminal responsibility. Italia dei Valori is formally asking Antonio Catricalà, the head of the Competition and Market Regulator, to do his duty and to immediately start proceedings to protect the market and to protect transparency. The premier cannot in fact continue to state that the company is on the brink of collapse, as it discourages the passengers from continuing to fly with Alitalia

If this is not disturbing the market, tell me then when it is? Anyway, in this affair, Berlusconi has major responsibility: he wanted to sell off the flagship company. The idea of the government wanting to insist on the Cai proposals, in fact, for me is the obvious demonstration that Berlusconi wants to favour his friends, the usual local wide boys. He made an electoral promise that was then shown to be a swindle to the detriment of the workers and of the economy of the country.

As I have mentioned, today the union representatives of the pilots, the cabin crew and the land-based staff, in a press conference at which I participated, announced their intention to make available a part of their salaries and the whole amount of the final lump sum payments, for a total value of 340 million euro, even more than double the sum offered by Colaninno for the relaunch of Alitalia. This initiative demonstrates that the Alitalia workers do not want to abandon the company, but are ready to risk their own money so that it can continue to fly. I can foresee the possibility of arriving at a solution that is satisfactory both for the company and the employees. At this point the government must accept its own responsibility.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Economy