About 40 employees in Gucci’s design departmentof French luxury goods group Kering’s flagship fashion house, staged a four-hour strike today to protest their transfer from Rome to Milan, citing fears of “covert mass redundancies”.

“Gucci cuts but does not sew” or “At Gucci, layoffs are in fashion” read the placards held by the protesters, who gathered in front of the company’s headquarters in Rome.

The famous fashion house announced in October the transfer to Milan of the design department, which includes the creative direction, forcing, according to the trade unions, 153 workers out of a total of 219 to move to the capital of Lombardy under conditions that were not considered satisfactory.

“The design office is the heart of Gucci, where the designers and dressmakers work, where all the collections are born. This is the first strike mobilization in its history”, Chiara Giannotti, trade union representative of the house, explained to AFP.

According to her, more than 50 workers in the Gucci design office participated a week ago in a mobilization organized by the trade unions CGIL and UIL.

“Kering wants to take advantage of this restructuring to reduce staff and lead to the exit door workers who see themselves being offered unsatisfactory conditions, as they cannot leave Rome because that is where their families live, children them,” Giannotti pointed out.

These accusations are rejected by Gucci: “Having been announced to the unions at the beginning of October”, this transfer “does not foresee any reduction of personnel” and “will be implemented with full respect for the rules in force”, the company assures in a note.

“In order to facilitate as much as possible the transfer of all workers affected by (the decision), the company has foreseen a series of measures, both financial and supportive, more favorable compared to those provided for in the collective agreement,” continues Gucci. .

While the 153 workers must be transferred to Milan by March, the fate of the other 66 who will remain in Rome for the time being “is uncertain”, according to the unions.

“We demand the same conditions for everyone in the context of a transfer to Milan or a relocation to other Kering businesses in Rome or Florence,” said Chiara Giannotti.