LuisaViaRoma workers go strike in Florence amid liquidation filing

Employees of Italian retailer LuisaViaRoma have gone on strike in Florence today, after union representatives announced that liquidation proceedings were being pursued by the company. As reported by La Nazione, the Italian court's protective measures under the negotiated crisis settlement procedure expired. LuisaViaRoma has announced it will apply for a preliminary liquidation agreement to obtain protective measures against creditors and suspend enforcement actions for another 60 days.

“The negotiated crisis settlement was not successful, but negotiations with new investors are ongoing. A capital increase of 15 million has been approved, and the deadline to subscribe is April 20,” explained Tommaso Andorlini, chief executive officer and key shareholder of LuisaViaRoma, to the newspaper La Nazione. “Our objective is the same as the union's, which is to protect employment levels. We have already reached agreements with 90 percent of creditors, and now we will have another 60 days to finalise them.”

Filcams Cgil Florence highlights in a statement that “hundreds of jobs are at risk”. A strike and picket are scheduled for today, March 26, while a meeting on the dispute will be held with the regional authorities on March 31. The strike is taking place during the last four hours of the working day, with a picket from 3:30pm CET in front of the historic LuisaViaRoma store at 16/21R Via Roma in Florence.

“Learning that LuisaViaRoma's intention is discontinuity through corporate restructuring leaves us speechless. This will certainly be even more true for all the current employees who, despite the existing solidarity contract, were confident that an industrial solution would prevail. Today, we are talking about discontinuity through a liquidation agreement,” wrote the unions.

“We do not forget that, as a result of the crisis and the disastrous choices of a management team that proved unequal to the task, over 100 employees have left LuisaViaRoma in the last year and a half. This includes those who saw no logic in what was being done and those who were formally invited to leave the company by signing a settlement,” the workers' representatives continued.

The company has confirmed to workers its intention to have the website managed by its subsidiary, which has been put up for sale. “We understand there are already potential buyers for it. Similarly, we have been told that management intends to entrust the creation of the new site to an external company. At the same time, we have no knowledge of what will happen to the historic stores, which helped to build the prestige of the LuisaViaRoma brand even before the advent of the internet,” stressed the LuisaViaRoma and Filcams Cgil Florence union representatives.

All of this puts hundreds of direct (approximately 200) and indirect jobs at risk. In addition to the employees directly employed by LuisaViaRoma, there are about one hundred workers contracted at the Campi Bisenzio warehouse.

“As Filcams Cgil of Florence and Rsa Luisa Via Roma, we once again appeal to the institutions. We ask that from the next plenary meeting at the crisis unit of the Tuscany Region on March 31, 2026, they stand by the workers. They must support those whose daily expertise is the true added value of any work activity.”

This article was translated to English using an AI tool.

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