Home appliance giant, Electrolux, isn't going away. “We want to stay in Italy, where we have substantial investments to make but help is needed from all sides to reduce labor costs”. Ernesto Ferrario, CEO of the Swedish multinational, said it in the Senate committee and went on to specify that he wanted to be sure of "the competitive base".
In particular, Ferrario explains “the growing gap in competitiveness compared to Poland and Romania which has led to a migration of volumes, around 60% of which are produced in Eastern Europe. This concerns a progressive phenomenon that does not see a stop. In France and Spain, the production of household appliances has almost disappeared, so the phenomenon is quite clear”.
The CEO he denied that the company had proposed a 40% cut in labor costs but an intervention on the “second level employment contract” with an “8-9% impact. Cutting wages, Ferrario specifies, would not be legally or technically possible.
Alongside this, the multinational company has proposed an extension of the solidarity contracts, which provide for "6+2 hours of work" per day "with a solidarity contribution from the Government".
But the unions, who met yesterday at the summit in Mestre, are taking sides against the plan to cut employment and wages proposed last week by the Swedish household appliance giant, as a condition for maintaining production in Italy. So the mobilization continues.
