20 July, 2010Workers strike in protest of Fiat's unfair dismissal of four workers, sacked for fighting against company proposals including threats of only investing in production if workers concede on conditions and rights.
ITALY: A four-hour strike, organized by IMF affiliate FIOM-CGIL, was held on July 16 at the Fiat Group in Italy in response to the unfair dismissal of four workers.
A young professional white collar worker was dismissed from the Mirafiori plant in Turin because he circulated through the internal company email a letter of Tychy Polish workers expressing solidarity with the struggle of workers at the Fiat plant in Pomigliano d'Arco, Naples.
In Melfi, two delegates and one member of FIOM were dismissed by Sergio Marchionne, CEO of the Fiat Group, on the grounds the workers put obstacles to working in the plant during a strike against the intensification of work.
In protest of the dismissals, FIOM-CGIL called for the four hour strike across the Fiat Group on July 16 and announced it will contest the dismissals in court.
The workers' actions and subsequent strike came at a time when Fiat asked its workers to make heavy concessions in return for investing 700 million Euros in the Pomigliano d'Arco plant and shifting production of its best-selling Panda model from a factory in Tychy, Poland to Pomigliano.
Pomigliano employs 5,000 workers and produced 35,000 cars last year, is one of five Fiat factories in Italy and produces models for the company's Alfa Romeo brand.
Unions in Italy were divided in their response to the company's proposal, with four agreeing, but the largest metalworkers' union, FIOM-CGIL, refusing to sign and denouncing the proposal as "blackmail". FIOM-CGIL argues that Fiat's demands, including possible sanctions against absenteeism and strikers, broke the existing collective agreement and are unconstitutional.
Fiat, the largest private sector employer in the country, threatened to close the plant in Pomigliano d'Arco, situated near Naples in the economically depressed southern region of Italy, if the workers did not accept the deal.
In a ballot of the workforce at the Pomigliano plant on June 22, only 62 per cent of 4,642 workers who voted supported Fiat's proposal to increase productivity through a six day working week and restricting strikes and limiting existing benefits such as sick days.
Speaking about the dismissal of the four workers, Maurizio Landini, FIOM-CGIL General Secretary, declared that, "Fiat has passed from blackmail - as it was on Pomigliano plant workers, obliging them to accept its conditions including preventing strikes, a constitutional right - to the retaliation and intimidation of workers."