British group Burberry will proceed with a 20% cut in its global workforce, involving thousands of workers. In recent weeks, the opening of a collective redundancy procedure was also made official in Italy. The business has announced its intention to proceed with 39 layoffs out of a total of just under 330 employees at the Italian headquarters, representing more than 10% of the workforce. To these could be added a significant number of fixed-term contracts that will most likely not be renewed.

The company has voiced a need for internal reorganisation, aimed at improving efficiency margins, in order to counter the luxury crisis that is slowing sales throughout the fashion circuit. “Faced with the company’s closure to our proposals, the unions, together with the company union representatives, have resolved to open a state of agitation,” Filcams, Fisascat and Uiltucs announced. The organisations asserted that, “the reorganisation cannot be placed on the shoulders of the workers.”

“The difficulties of the sector cannot be an excuse to just decrease the workforce,” announced the union. “Burberry chooses to lay off [workers] because of incorrect business choices, excessive investments and lower than expected economic results, proposing the closure of labour relations with incentives even lower than what happened in 2022, the date of the last collective dismissal procedure opened… This umpteenth crisis demonstrates the fragility of economic models that characterise many multinationals: when profits grow, they capitalise without redistributing; when the market slows down, they pass the costs on to the workers. This is not acceptable.”

Filcams, Fisascat, and Uiltucs urged the company to consider alternative solutions, also in light of recent reports of an albeit slight upturn in business.

The unions are calling for the company to explore all useful options to safeguard employment, including: the use of social shock absorbers, a clear sustainability plan for the stores and headquarter operations, the possibility of voluntary reductions in working hours (part-time), and forms of economic support for those who voluntarily opt not to oppose layoffs. Meetings with workers will be held in the coming days to decide on further actions to be taken.