Telecontact protests: 1,600 employees on strike for a month

Following yesterday's demonstration outside the Rome headquarters of Poste Italiane, TIM's majority shareholder, a national strike by Telecontact employees begins today. The protest is expected to last until December 16th, with staggered strikes: two hours at the end of shifts for full-time workers, an hour and a half for part-time workers at 75%, and one hour for those at 50%.

Across Italy, 1.591 workers are affected, 303 of them in Naples alone. Eighty percent of them are women. All are united in the same battle: to oppose the sale of the company by TIM, which currently controls 100% of it, to a new company of the Distribution Group with a share capital of just €10,000. The new structure will bring in another 1.789 employees, but guarantees regarding future employment remain unclear.

The telecommunications crisis and the reconversion plan

TIM justifies the move by citing the profound crisis in the sector: a 35% decline in the last twelve years, which made restructuring inevitable. Employees are promised a transition and training program. TIM will no longer focus solely on customer service, but will also play a role in the digitalization of public administration through a partnership with Poste Italiane, the details of which are still being finalized.

But it's precisely this vagueness that worries workers. In addition to the uncertainty about job stability, the loss of company benefits weighs heavily. While the base salary is guaranteed, all elements deriving from company bargaining risk disappearing, resulting in a sharp pay cut.

Unions on the warpath

The trade unions have already scheduled a month of protests and will request an urgent meeting with the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy in the coming days. The goal is to strengthen contractual protections and obtain concrete guarantees for the future of nearly 1,600 families who today are anxiously looking forward to an increasingly uncertain future.

The game has only just begun, but workers have already made their voices heard: they will not accept being sacrificed on the altar of a restructuring that risks leaving them without protection.