Ikea in Italy row over sacked Milan single mum Published duration 30 November 2017

image copyright Reuters image caption Ikea has been in Italy for 29 years

Italian unions are in dispute with Swedish retail giant Ikea over a single mother sacked because she struggled with early morning shifts.

Marica Ricutti said she could not start work at 7am because she had to take her two young children - one of them disabled - to school.

The Italian retail workers' union Filcams Cgil has protested outside the Ikea store in Corsico, Milan.

Ikea says Ms Ricutti decided her own working hours without warning managers.

Ms Ricutti, 39, has worked at the Corsico branch of Ikea for 17 years, holding some senior roles.

"They told me they had taken account of the situation; I would never have expected to be treated like this," she complained.

Behaviour criticised

The company said she had agreed shift changes with colleagues for around half her working days, but had not got permission for other shift changes.

It said she had decided her own timetable without giving prior notice to her bosses. It accused her of "unacceptable behaviour which undermined the relationship of confidence" in the workplace.

The Filcams Cgil union staged two short walkouts at the store on Tuesday. It plans to hold a rally on 5 December to get Ms Ricutti reinstated.

Her tweet said: "She's requesting a simple thing: to be able to work and reconcile that with her life and her children. She's been doing it for 17 years! It can be done!"

Marco Beretta, a Cgil representative, told La Repubblica that modern innovations - including algorithms - had made it harder to accommodate workers' individual circumstances.

Ikea has been heavily criticised on social media for its dismissal of Ms Ricutti.