Open letter to R & D OPTICS……..

The Company says the jobs' cuts are due to a lack of efficiency, because of the splitting of products and laboratories.

That the splitting of the products could really cause inefficiency, ALU will be demonstrate its. But this is the result of the management's decisions. Did Optics R&D workers' mistake in applying these guidelines? The R&D workers in Bari and Vimercate always accepted to work at full capacity, often on demand of their responsibles, even during the common holidays and the weekends, relying that the given "efforts" should have helped to maintain and to develop business in our sites and our laboratories and to provide a look-out for a stable work to young people, to subcontractors and to trainees who have worked and that are still working in our offices.

If these efforts are considered not enough to give us a look-out for a work in the future, it would be better to know earlier about them, but if the directives of management weren't the right ones, then cuts should be done in the top management!

To say that the inefficiency is due to the excessive fragmentation of the laboratories is not only incomprehensible to the 30 people cut in R&D Optics in Vimercate, who are already working in the european headquarter, but in our opinion it's a serious mistake: does the Company think that a project can be carried out in an efficient way only with people working side by side? We are in the third millennium and there are a lot of technological tools to reduce gaps in distances, especially in ALU. This sounds like a solution in contrast with the principles of globalization. And what about all the operations of relocation, not only in R&D, towards China and India? And what about the thousands of subcontractors and sub-contracting companies working with us on projects of R&D? Is the fragmentation of the sub-contractors efficient?? In addition to losing heads, ALU should know that it's losing important skills and know-how, that will give a negative feedback to our customers in terms of quality of the products we sell and of care of the already installed products!!

All this is strongly in contrasts with what the Company says in the recent programs launched worldwide about the research of skills, when it says that there is no need of the physical moving of the employee to the place where his skill is needed, encouraging remote working.

Moreover, ALU should not forget that in Bari it has always used Italian and European funding resources since the birth of the lab in 1988 thanks to the funds from the L.64/86. We cannot understand why this funds usage cannot continue also in the future. There are actual projects already approved for the lab of Bari, in cooperation with the local University (funding of € 2.5 Million), and new projects have already been submitted and are waiting for approval.

Instead to encourage and to improve the usage of these funds to consolidate and to develop R&D in Bari and in Italy, the Company decides to surrender and to open a serious social problem in Bari and Vimercate.

We ask to ALU to rethink its decision, because the submitted plan does not absolutely go towards a restoration and an improvement of the efficiency in projects and laboratories, but it looks like just a way to fire some colleagues.

The efficiency can be achieved through continuous training of workers ALU, introducing a "serious" plan to reduce sub-contractors and external consultants

The ALU plan looks like only an escape plan of the activities of Optics from Italy, or maybe from the whole Europe.

On our side we are immediately available to discuss the company's effectiveness and efficiency in Optics R&D of our country, but with the same strenght we can say that we'll oppose with all the available ways, the submitted plans of dismissions of the lab in Bari and the job cuts expected in Vimercate.

It is no longer acceptable that Optics continues with its usual way to act like the cleaning of an artichoke, that in the last years cuted the R&D know-how in our country and now hit Bari and Vimercate and ending somewhere else, without showing and discussing an overall strategy that improve development and innovation and not job cuts.

Unions delegates ALU BARI, BATTIPAGLIA,RIETI and VIMERCATE

February 2011