Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., FISTEL CISL, SLC CGIL and UILCOM UIL have signed a new Corporate Agreement that the Mondadori Group will implement from 1 January 2019. The text of the Agreement has been approved by 98% meetings of the staff.

The Agreement constitutes an innovative model in the publishing sector and places people at the centre by recognising the value of human resources, the primary asset of any business, with a cultural approach that moves from a traditional model to one based on performance and accountability.

The parties agreed on the need to draw up a single contract for all of the employees covered by the national contract for publishing workers (CCNL grafici editoriali) in the different companies of the Mondadori Group, while simplifying and harmonising previously agreed conditions.

The Agreement also aims to modernise and experiment with a new approach to work, starting from an industrial relations model that facilitates bilateral discussion of central issues concerning the relationship between the company and its staff.

The approach extends also to processes of innovation and reorganisation, the trial of smart working, with the aim of improving the quality of the professional and personal life of employees, and training. The latter is seen as an indispensible tool for the achievement and maintenance of skills and professional development, as well as a strategic measure for the qualification and enhancement of staff. Opportunities for professional development will be encouraged also through internal mobility and job posting to support and sustain empowerment.

In the overall context of focusing on the needs of human resources, the parties agreed that staff accountability, also through the autonomous management of working hours, that foresees a single “clock in”, to facilitate an harmonious reconciliation between professional and personal needs that will result if greater satisfaction and an increase in the quality of work.

The Agreement signed will also introduce trials for specific tools to reconcile professional and personal life, such as smart working, and measures in support of families, with the aim of providing conditions that are more likely to make it easier to combine the demands of professional life with the needs of the family. Special attention has been given to the protection of maternity, with reduced hours for six months after returning to work and the bringing forward of the full salary for periods of reduced pay, as well as the attribution, for new fathers, of 10 days of paid leave.  Also in the case of serious illness, the Agreement foresees the withdrawal of the limited period job protection.

Despite the ongoing critical concerns that continue to affect the publishing sector, in particular from an economic perspective the Agreement also foresees the introduction for the three-year period, 2019-2021, of a single variable results-based annual bonus for all the Companies of the Group and an expression of this value in the form of a Corporate Welfare System that offers staff a series of services and initiatives aimed at facilitating the wellbeing of all employees and their families.