Fiat SpA’s largest union protested today in Rome against Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne’s proposal to curb strikes and increase shifts at the company’s Pomigliano d’Arco car factory in southern Italy.
Italy’s biggest manufacturer is using the Pomigliano plan as a test case to win labor concessions that may become a watershed for Italian companies.
“Competition is not pursued by cutting salaries and rights,” and “it’s not true that companies don’t have social responsibility,” said Maurizio Landini, head of the FIOM Union. He called for a general strike in his speech.
Marchionne wants to improve productivity at Fiat’s domestic plants, which lags that at the company’s foreign factories, in exchange for shifting production of its Panda model from Poland to Pomigliano. Turin-based Fiat plans to invest 20 billion euros ($28 billion) through 2014 in Italy to improve plants and vehicle development if unions agree to reduce strikes and add shifts.
While a majority of workers at the Pomigliano plant near Naples approved the deal in June, more than a third of them voted against it, saying Marchionne’s proposal violated their constitutional right to strike.
Marchionne has said he will proceed with the investment plan, called “Fabbrica Italia,” or “Italian factory,” only if unions agree to boost productivity in a new labor contract.
“We submitted counterproposals with regard to Pomigliano and we are still waiting for an answer,” Landini said.
