Workers confront a dilemma – concede hard earned rights, or risk losing their jobs, writes PADDY AGNEWin Rome
HAS FIAT boss Sergio Marchionne come up with a deal that the carmaker’s workers simply cannot turn down?
As of last night and continuing through today, the 5,500 workers at Fiat’s flagship Mirafiori plant in the company’s home town of Turin have been called on to vote in a referendum, the outcome of which may have implications that extend way beyond Italy’s car industry.
In effect, the workers have been asked to vote on a December 23rd agreement which, in return for flexible contracts and increased productivity, Fiat is offering a €20 billion investment (by 2014) in the company’s lossmaking Italian operations.
Obviously, the choice Fiat workers have to make reflects the socio-economic crisis facing industry in western Europe today.
It is a classic choice between hard-earned union rights and the ugly realities of the globalised marketplace, between workplace dignity and the fear of losing their jobs. In a television interview last October, Marchionne enraged many when he pointed out that Italy now stands in 118th position (out of 139) as far on work efficiency while its industrial competitivity rating puts it in 48th place.
Pointing out that none of the company’s €2 billion profits in 2010 were made in Italy, he added that if Fiat were to pull out of Italy it would make more money.
Marchionne has also noted that while 22,000 workers at the company’s five Italian plants produce 650,000 cars, 9,400 Brazilian Fiat workers turn out 750,000 vehicles. (Fiat now makes only 600,000 of its annual 2.2 million cars in Italy).
Lest the issue was not crystal clear, Marchionne spelt it out loud again at the Detroit motor show this week when he said if Fiat workers in Turin rejected this deal, he would make the cars in question (a joint venture with Jeep and Chrysler) elsewhere, in Canada or the United States.
If Marchionne’s remarks in Detroit annoyed trade union leaders, that irritation was as nothing compared with the rumpus provoked by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
While in Berlin for a meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, the prime minister broke his silence on the Fiat referendum to say that if a majority of the workers rejected the agreement, Fiat would be entitled to pull out of Italy.
“Shame on you” howled opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani and head of the leftist union CGIL Susanna Camusso. What other western leader, asked Camusso, would argue that the biggest industrial group in his country “would do well” to move elsewhere.
The strident protests that greeted Berlusconi’s and Marchionne’s remarks cannot, however, conceal the fact that the unions are bitterly divided. Leftist union FIOM, a member of the CGIL, representing 20 per cent of the Mirafiori workers, has refused to sign it, calling for a “No” vote and also for a strike.
Critics say the agreement not only undermines workers’ rights on striking and sick leave, but that it also imposes tougher working conditions – such as eight-hour shifts, with just three 10-minute breaks and a half-hour to eat.
Italo-Canadian Marchionne has been seen as the miracle man. His performance at Fiat since 2004 helped pave the way for the carmaker’s June 2009 alliance with bankrupt Chrysler. Fiat holds 25 per cent in Chrysler which Marchionne wants to increase to 51 per cent.
But a series of Red Brigade-style, spray paint offences in Turin this week, aimed at the Fiat boss, would suggest that the Marchionne honeymoon is over.
A victory for the “Yes” faction (the impression is that a majority of workers will accept the deal) would represent another important success for Marchionne. But will it prove to be a major defeat for the Fiat workers?
