Sierra SpA introduces part-time shiftwork aimed at women

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The Veneto region of northern Italy faces a combination of labour shortages and economic growth, encouraging the social partners to seek new forms of work organisation which can enable the recruitment of groups previously excluded from the labour market. An agreement signed in October 2000 at the metalworking company, Sierra SpA introduced a form of part-time shiftwork aimed at helping workers reconcile work and family responsibilities. In summer 2001, it seems that the agreement has been a success, especially in terms of recruiting women over the age of 40 who were not previously in paid employment.

Unemployment rates in the Veneto region of northern Italy have reached "frictional" levels, falling from 3.7% in 2000 to 3.5% in mid-2001, and the area is approaching full employment. Of those unemployed in 2000, some 63% were women. According to the 2001 report on the labour market presented by the Veneto regional labour agency on 11 July 2001, over the next few years the Veneto region will need at least 25,000 new workers per year in order to support an annual GDP growth of 2.2%. The local economy, which is particularly characterised by labour-intensive sectors, is facing a virtually saturated labour market. The region's birth rate is very low and has decreased by half over the past 30 years.

Given this situation, the local economy is having to address labour market niches which so far have been largely excluded from work. According to Daniele Marini, director of the North-East Foundation (Fondazione Nord-est), companies and trade unions will have to find more flexible regulations and organisational forms which are able to meet the diversified needs of an ever more differentiated labour force. They must focus "not only on adult men but also on women with children or ageing parents, 'young retired' people, students and immigrants."

An example of this necessity to experiment in order to attract new types of worker is provided by an agreement signed on 30 October 2001 at Sierra SpA, a metalworking company located in Verona and owned by the Aermec group, which has a turnover of ITL 68 billion (EUR 35 million), 60% of which comes from exports. In order to extend the use of its plants, the company and its Rsu union representative body signed an agreement addressed in particular at recruiting from groups largely excluded from its workforce. The company's personnel is predominantly composed of men: in 1999, out of 407 employees, only 70 were women.

The agreement launched a one-year experimental project, which turned out to be very successful. It introduced a system of part-time work of 30 weekly hours distributed over five days (from Monday to Friday) in three shifts (from 06.00 to 12.00, 12.00 to 18.00 and 18.00 to 00.00). On the basis of the agreement, the company hired 36 people on part-time and fixed-term contracts. All the existing workers on open-ended, full-time contracts were also able to switch to the new part-time work schedule, on a voluntary basis.

The new recruits were largely women in their late 40s, the majority of them "homemakers" without previous experience of industrial work. The part-time shiftwork pattern allows them to reconcile work and family needs. The context is that Italian families still often get together for lunch and dinner and the task of preparing meals generally falls on women. In order to meet their family duties, many women prefer not to work in paid employment, even if this could make them economically independent.

The parties to the agreement have welcomed its success and the new part-time shiftwork pattern will probably continue after the end of the one-year experimental period.

Giordano Riello, president of the Aermec group, supported the agreement with enthusiasm: "we studied a model of shiftwork tailored for housewives, which is able to reconcile home, family and work. Those who work during the morning will get home in time to get lunch ready, and so on for the other two shifts. It was a successful agreement both for us and for the workers". The trade union organisations welcomed the agreement too. Dino Mantovani, of the Verona organisation of the Fim-Cisl metalworkers' union is convinced that "it is possible to employ the layers so far excluded from the labour market, such as women over 40, only by making labour demand flexible."