UniCredit today signed a "Youth Plan" with Italy's trade unions to employ roughly 550 young people with permanent contracts or apprenticeships.
These positions will be part of a generational turnover to meet operational and development needs, primarily in the bank's commercial network.
The agreement between the bank and the trade unions was crafted to enhance the competitiveness, productivity and profitability of UniCredit in Italy while improving employment prospects among the country's youth.
The new staff will join UniCredit when current employees exit on a voluntary basis through an expansive appeal to the Solidarity Fund, along with incentives for resources without pension rights.
Agreements to these incentives will be collected among current staff in the first quarter of this year. Recourse to the Solidarity Fund will take place under the conditions defined with the workers' union representatives on February 4, 2017. This opportunity will be first offered to workers who meet the legal requirements for retirement by December 1, 2023 and thereafter be offered to workers who fulfill these requirements in the period between January 1 and June 1, 2024.
The new recruitment of 550 young people will add to the more than 1,500 jobs filled in the three-year period of 2014 to 2016, and to the 1,300 additional recruitments already envisaged for the three-year period of 2017 to 2019, as well as to the partial recovery of departures by job turnover.
On the occasion of the signing of the agreement for the "Youth Plan," UniCredit and the trade unions also agreed to a Corporate Productivity Award of €1,150 in workers' conto welfare or €800 for workers who opt for cash disbursements. The parties have defined a timeframe for the completion of this overall corporate welfare reform.
Furthermore, UniCredit and the trade unions established a path for the adoption in Italy of the principles enunciated by the Joint Declaration on work-life balance signed by UniCredit and the European Works Council, introducing new tools to enable new ways of working for employees. Lastly, the company and the trade unions agreed to further commitments on training, with particular focus on professional requalification processes and commercial policies.