REPRESENTATIVES of Alitalia's flight attendants yesterday agreed to a rescue plan for the bankrupt airline as the Italian government continued talks to bring all unions on board.
The ANPAV union signed the deal, agreeing to some 1,300 layoffs among flight attendants, the group's president, Massimo Muccioli, said.
Negotiations with the pilots union and other groups that have opposed the plan were ongoing.
Alitalia's survival chances got a boost on Thursday when aviation authorities allowed the airline to keep flying after Italy's biggest union withdrew its objections and agreed to the plan, which envisions selling the company's good assets to a group of Italian investors.
The plan had originally been withdrawn by the investors after some unions balked at layoffs, route eliminations and other concessions, but after Thursday's breakthrough officials said the new Alitalia could be in place by mid-October.
The government has made clear that the plan was Alitalia's last chance after two failed attempts at privatizing the long troubled airline in the last two years.
The investors - lead by Roberto Colaninno, the chairman of scooter maker Piaggio - have pledged to inject 1 billion euros (US$1.46 billion) into the loss-making carrier, strip away unprofitable assets and merge it with Italy's second-largest carrier, the much smaller Air One.
They also are looking for an international carrier to take a minority share. Potential partners include Air France-KLM and Lufthansa, whose chairman, Wolfgang Mayrhuber was in Rome yesterday for meetings with government and union officials.
Luigi Angeletti, head of the UIL labor confederation, said that Mayrhuber had confirmed Lufthansa's interest during the talks.
"We are carefully observing the situation. The Italian market continues to be interesting and important for us," Lufthansa spokeswoman Claudia Lange was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency.
The apiculture association rolled out the French urban program in 2005, and will present its results next year in Montpellier, France, at a conference organized by Apimondia, the Rome-based global group of beekeepers' associations.
Paris's Parc de la Villette has an exhibit open through the end of this week that lets city dwellers sleep with the bees.
The US and the UK also have used cities as breeding grounds for bees, although the "French program is very well developed and has huge scale compared to others," said Asger Sogaard Jorgensen, Apimondia's president.
"In many countries, the countryside has become a desert for bees."
The US saw large hive losses in 2006, 90 percent or more in some cases. Colony Collapse Disorder, the sudden, massive disappearance of bees, was found in 35 states and has harmed hives in Asia, Europe and South America, according to the USDA. Pesticides, mites and viruses are among leading causes.
In Europe, about 84 percent of crop species depend directly on insect pollinators, especially bees, says a June report co-authored by Bernard Vaissiere, head of research at the Avignon, France-based INRA. France is Europe's biggest agricultural producer.
"There is mounting evidence of pollinator decline all over the world and consequences in many agricultural areas could be significant," the report said.
Jean Paucton, who's kept bees on the roof of Paris's Opera House for about 25 years, has seen that rural decline first hand. The retired Opera House accessory artist says his hives overlooking the Galeries Lafayette department store in central Paris are healthier than the ones he keeps in the country.
She declined to comment on the content of Mayrhuber's meetings.