What future is outlined for the Italian industry, and in particular for the largest companies and what can our country do to continue to have a leading role in a system of integrated markets now on a global level?
Giuseppe Berta, professor at Bocconi, but Turinese by birth and a profound connoisseur of Fiat affairs and large Italian companies in general, with a agile volume on the Fiat-Chrysler affair published by Il Mulino, (Giuseppe Berta, "Fiat-Chrysler and the drift of industrial Italy". Edizioni Il Mulino, pp. 152, euro 14) helps to focus, beyond the exasperated political and trade union controversies that characterized the last two years, the significance of Marchionne's bet on the other side of the Atlantic, and the role that the political and social parties have had and should have in order to preserve Italy's important role as an industrial power.
Regarding the meaning of the merger operation between Fiat and Chrysler Berta is very clear: when the 2008 crisis broke out, the Turin house found itself too small to be able to face a declining and increasingly competitive market. The American house, although practically bankrupt, was a unique opportunity for Fiat to reach such dimensions as to be able to play a role among the main car manufacturers. So if on the one hand it is true that Fiat saved Chrysler, on the other, as Marchionne himself said, it is also true that Chrysler saved Fiat.
In 2011 the new automotive group born from the integration of two weaknesses, will sell 4,2 million cars worldwide and will ask for the budget with a profit. There are still not enough results to tell if the new group has truly overcome its weaknesses. It will take a few more years to be able to say with certainty that Marchionne's choice is a winning one. For now it can be said that it has a logic and that the first steps are positive especially in the USA. In Europe, on the other hand, a marked weakness continues, above all of the Fiat brands and this will need to be remedied, in addition to the need to strengthen the first existing bridgeheads in India and China.
This industrial challenge has brought about particularly relevant consequences for Italy where the existing plants have been faced with the need to adjust their productivity levels to those existing in the other plants of the group, and not only in the Brazilian ones but also in those of the United States.
In the latter case Berta examines with particular attention the evolution of the powerful American auto industry union UAW which has been able to make the leap from a position of pure counterparty to a sharing of company objectives, in short approaching a German-type partnership model.
In Italy, on the other hand, this turning point did not take place, and indeed, Fiat's attempt to ask the union to assume a precise responsibility with respect to the applicability of the agreements signed, has unleashed a battle on the part of Fiom that has not yet ended concluded.
On the reasons that led Fiom to reject any logic of sharing company objectives, Berta is clear even if showing respect for the positions of this union. However, only telling the truth can help clarify the situation and therefore, if desired, identify possible solutions. "Fiom - writes Berta - has chosen in the face of the innovative requests of Fiat, the path of renewing its antagonistic identity as an organization aimed at movements, sensitive to cultivating collective emotions, rooted in the virtual squares of television" without however making positive proposals of solving competitiveness problems. And Berta returns to this key several times, highlighting how Fiom has seized the opportunity of the Fiat dispute because only the vicissitudes of this company offer such a vast media platform in Italy that it can be exploited for purposes that are outside the strict union logic but which pertain to the affirmation of a political project. From this point of view, the book should be read with particular attention by Michele Santoro and by many other television and print journalists including those of Corriere della Sera, who uncritically have been in the front row in defending the "Italian specificity", precisely those that have brought us into the crisis situation in which we are.
Naturally Berta is not tender in underlining the shortcomings and errors of Fiat and of Marchionne himself, in terms of communication and the involvement of politicians and opinion leaders in a proposal for change that would have marked an opportunity for rebirth for the entire Italian manufacturing sector. This should have meant not only a different calibration of the tones of the declarations, but also a real willingness to discuss all the implications of the "Fabbrica Italia" plan which instead remained a declaration of intentions rather than a real operational project.
Failure to solve the trade union problem could worsen the positioning of Italian industry already oppressed by an excessive tax burden and by the inefficiency of the Public Administration, especially in relation to investments that could come from international companies. Berta demonstrates that in the United States the powerful car union has "entrusted its survival to the acquisition of an institutional role which, although paid for at the price of heavy sacrifices, has given legitimacy to exist within the car companies, ” and therefore to be able to count on outlining its future. In Italy we are still far from this turning point mainly due to Fiom. The way to resolve the differences without thinking of an impossible defeat and destruction of one party, could be that - Berta suggests - to give life to a unitary trade union of the industry in which therefore the most extremist demands would be balanced by those of other industrial sectors with a more solid tradition of participation in the fortunes of the company. Now that the Monti government will have to make incisive reforms not only to put the public finances in order, but above all to lay the foundations for a true recovery of development, even more modern industrial relations will have to make a significant contribution to this restart of Italy, on solid and lasting foundations.
