RCS Mediagroup shareholder meetings are held exclusively in digital format, taking advantage of new opportunities offered by technologies. But in the editorial offices of its periodicals, President Urbano Cairo canceled agile work with a single swipe of the sponge, plunging the company into a cultural and organizational setback that the last four years seemed to have overcome. And this just on the eve of the approval of the 2023 economic accounts which saw a positive balance sheet of 57 million euros, the distribution of a dividend of 0.07 euros per share and the return of the Magazines sector to profitability, with a positive ebitda. of 2.1 million euros compared to -1.8 million in 2022, thanks also and above all to the sacrifices of journalists between layoffs and massive elimination of leave.
Facts
Introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, when only thanks to smart work our newspapers have always been created and published with regularity and completeness of information, smart work in RCS periodicals has also been used in the following years, first with the signing of an agreement. linked to the state of crisis until December 2023 then with subsequent extensions expressly concluded “as part of a discussion aimed at finding a more global agreement”.
On April 29, suddenly the company informed us that it would stop all forms of agile working from May 1. A bit like celebrating, with an ironic and cynical vein, Labor Day.
The lack of answers
The motivation was the stated belief that for periodicals, as a collective work of genius, the ideal organization of work, in the eyes of the company, is exclusively in person. On the contrary, by the way, intelligent working is fully operational in the editorial offices of Corriere della Sera. With hateful and incomprehensible discrimination within the same company.
No response, even a courtesy one, came from the President of Cairo either, to whom we immediately sent a letter to highlight the undeniable advantages of smart work also “for the efficiency of businesses, with economic savings in the short and long term and in particular with an immediate recovery in productivity thanks to greater commitment of workers, greater flexibility and fewer absences for short-term illnesses, which constitute a direct cost for companies”, and to ask him again “to open negotiations that regulate agile work within our editorial staff in a careful and efficient manner”. Subjects which, obviously, did not deserve the attention of our president.
It was only thanks to our insistence, and perhaps for fear of exposing us to harsher criticism, that the company agreed after a few days to protect colleagues suffering from particular health problems which prevent them from return to work in person. And to allow remote activity on sites and social networks during certain particularly inconvenient time slots.
A modern and environmentally friendly company?
However, we are not looking for “concessions”. We deserve to work in a modern and responsible company, capable of overcoming the dusty and anti-historical logic of the control of workers by the owners of the steel factories and also of remaining faithful to the declared commitment to ecological sustainability and Environmental Protection. also in the pages of the financial statements provided to shareholders.
Not only. We demand from the company respect and awareness of the way in which the exercise of our profession, by definition already flexible, has profoundly changed over the last two decades, with the development and integration of paper editions of our magazines with activity on the web and on social networks. A change in commitments, schedules and areas of expertise that newspaper journalists were willing and able to cope with, with a huge boost in efficiency and productivity.
Agile working, we strongly reiterate, is a work organization tool useful not only for the well-being of workers, for reconciling life and professional commitments and for the protection of our planet, but also and above all effective for companies, for their productivity and their budgets.
It is not a bargaining chip, to be exploited when appropriate or to obtain new economic cuts and worker sacrifices, as the company seems to believe, but one of the signs of growth and projection towards the future. he future of any company that wants to call itself mature, modern, attentive to its accounts as well as the well-being of its employees.
High tension
It is for this reason that we are determined not to back down on our positions, our ideas and on the need and opportunity to quickly reach agreement on agile working in RCS journals. Maintain tension and attention on these issues, by broadcasting our positions everywhere, by all means and on all channels at our disposal. And to ask the president of Cairo to stop playing the role of an anachronistic and anti-economic master of the 19th century, and to adhere to the image of an intelligent, modern and successful entrepreneur that he wants to transmit to the outside world. as owner and administrator of newspapers, television and football teams.
Journalists from RCS periodicals
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THE PUBLISHER’S RESPONSE
We reaffirm once again how much the journalistic work of Periodicals is based on discussion between editors, which stimulates creativity, from which ideas and editorial proposals are born and on the constant relationship with Management. On these assumptions, overturned for reasons of force majeure during Covid, is based a work organization, capable of creating authoritative, independent and quality content. These characteristics are the constant guidelines of the editorial work of RCS MediaGroup, whose modernity is certainly not linked to the use of smart working. Furthermore, in cases where it proves necessary to respond to the specific health needs of our journalists, we have already taken measures to stipulate corresponding individual agreements.
THE PUBLISHER
