Fiat issues ultimatum, says plans for Italy not ditched
Carmaker wants guarantees 'plants can function'
28 July, 18:38
(ANSA) - Turin, July 28 - Fiat said Wednesday that its plans
to boost production in Italy have not been ditched after causing
a stir last week by saying it would make a new model in Serbia.However, the company also told trade union leaders and government representatives that Fabbrica Italia, the plan agreed last year to increase activity in its homeland, could only go ahead if workers accepted change is needed to survive in today's competitive markets.
''We are the only company to invest 20 billion (euros) in the country,'' Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne was quoted as saying by sources at the meeting.
''But we must have guarantees that the plants can function.
''If the project is just a pretext to leave things as they are, it's right that everyone assumes responsibility for their actions in the knowledge that Fabbrica Italia cannot go ahead and the plans and investments will have to be downsized.
''At this point we want a yes or a no. Yes means modernising the Italian industrial system. ''No means leaving things as they are, accepting that the industrial system will continue to be inefficient and inadequate for making profits and, therefore, for keeping or increasing jobs''.
Last week Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said the Fabbrica Italia will be slowed following tensions with the FIOM union over proposals to introduce flexible working procedures to increase production at a plant near Naples in exchange for making Panda cars there.
FIOM, which is linked to the nation's biggest union CGIL, opposed the accord for the Pomigliano d'Arco plant, but it is going ahead anyway after other unions backed it, as did 62% of workers there in a vote. Indeed, Fiat said Tuesday that it has set up a new company to give it a freer hand in managing the Pomigliano plant. Raffaele Bonanni, the head of the CISL union, replied to Marchionne's demands with a ''yes, without ifs, without buts''.
However, he called on Fiat not to withdraw from a long-established mechanism for the national collective bargaining of labour contracts, after Marchionne admitted this was a possibility.
Marchionne reassured the unions that the decision to make the L0, the new vehicle that will replace its Multipla and Lancia Musa models, in Serbia rather than at the Mirafiori plant in the carmaker's Turin home did not spell disaster for the latter.
''The move does not remove prospects for Mirafiori,'' he said. ''There are alternatives to guarantee its volume of production''.
CGIL head Guglielmo Epifani was sceptical though.
''I heard lots of optimistic talk but the truth is that there's nothing new,'' Epifani told reporters. ''The uncertainty about the production commitments (for Italy) remains. The reassurances about the future of Mirafiori are not commitments or certainties.
''We have asked the government not to wash its hands of this. It cannot be a spectator''. photo: Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne and Raffaele Bonanni, the head of the CISL union.
