(Finance) – Covisian he exposed Ita Airways to “economic and reputational damage, as well as damaging its passengers departing for the summer season”. This is what the president of Ita Airways said, Alfredo Altavilla, in a hearing in the Chamber on the affair of the company that carried out the service, now interrupted, of call center for the airline. Altavilla added that Covisian communicated to the company “the intention not to be able to respect the commitments made in front of the ministry”, on 21 October last year, when the company had signed an agreement to clause social in which it undertook to hire 543 people of Almaviva which carried out the call center service to Alitalia.
Altavilla stated that the company justified the decision with the fact that the obligation to comply with the social clause “had compromised the profitability from the clerk“and made it known that the airline has already initiated actions to protect Covisian for both contractual and pre-contractual liabilities”.
The president of Ita Airways explained that for these reasons Ita Airways at that point decided to contact others providers qualified to perform the same services “but, since none of them made themselves available given the onerousness of the commitments undertaken by Covisian in relation to the social clause, the only solution was the creation of a internal call center built around the aforementioned initial nucleus of about 40 resources and which today has about 170 hires, of which over 50% coming from the Alitalia layoffs in Extraordinary Administration, confirming once more the importance of this pool of workers from which to draw to identify highly professional resources “.” Ita Airways – added Altavilla – also expressed its willingness to hire workers from Covisian, having already hired 12 with based in Rome“.
Ita calculated that if it had accepted the 64% increase requested by Covisian for the continuation of the call center service, there would have been an increase in costs of the company for 4 million a yearwith a loss in value of 70 million charged to the Ministry of the Treasury on the company’s sale process. “Covisian has put in place a dynamic blackmail which would have entailed, in case of acceptance of the proposal by Ita Airways, a greater disbursement for the latter for the benefit of Covisian “, said Altavilla.
As for Covisian’s decision to lay off the people hired to perform the service with the airline, Altavilla argued that “Ita Airways only considers itself part injured in the matter in question and, therefore, unrelated to any further responsibility, attributable only and exclusively to Covisian “.