Fiat, Labor Reach a Tentative Accord
Union leaders announced a tentative accord Sunday in the three-week strike at a Fiat factory in southern Italy that has cost the automaker tens of thousands of vehicles just as the company was trying to bounce back after years of losses.
Labor leaders expressed satisfaction over the accord, reached after one of Italy’s longest and more violent walkouts in years.
“We’ll sign the pact after the workers approve it,” said Gianni Rinaldini, secretary-general of the FIOM metalworkers’ union. Discussion by the rank and file was expected to begin Monday, with balloting to follow in successive days.
“Tonight at 10 p.m., it’s back to work,” a labor leader, Giuseppe Cillis, told the Italian news agency ANSA in Melfi, where the walkout began April 19.
Fiat Chief Executive Giuseppe Morchio called the settlement costly but said that in the end “the sense of responsibility prevailed,” Apcom, another Italian news agency, reported.
The Turin-based automaker, Italy’s largest private company, is going through a challenging time. Milan daily Corriere Della Sera reported Sunday that Fiat’s board would be formally informed Tuesday that Chairman Umberto Agnelli was battling cancer.
Agnelli’s brother, longtime Fiat chairman and family business baron Giovanni Agnelli, died last year after suffering prostate cancer.
About a week into the strike, workers scuffled with police who tried to remove the picket line outside the Melfi plant, which is one of Fiat’s more modern factories.
Because Melfi’s production line also supplies parts to other Fiat factories, the walkout hampered the company’s assembly lines in much of Italy.
At the start of the third week, the automaker had put its losses at 35,000 vehicles.
The Italian news agency ANSA, reporting on the success of a marathon bargaining session between management and unions that ended shortly before dawn Sunday, said the tentative pact called for a monthly pay hike of $126.
According to the proposed pact, workers would no longer be required to work back-to-back weeks of night shifts, ANSA said.
Labor Minister Roberto Maroni urged all sides to quickly resume working together for Fiat’s turnaround.
“Now it’s necessary that the company be accompanied without hesitation by the commitment of all in the turnaround plan to guarantee the strong presence of the Fiat group in the Italian and European industrial order,” Maroni said.
