On Ilva "the agreement is done and for us to be valid it must be approved by the workers in a referendum". This was announced by the general secretary of Fiom, Francesca Re David, at the end of the river meeting, which began on Wednesday afternoon and continued until dawn. The definitive signature arrived at the beginning of the afternoon and the final document does not foresee any redundancy.
"The hires are all - he added - starting from 10.700, which is very close to the number of workers who are employed today, and there is a commitment to hire all the others until 2023 without any penalties on wages and rights: it was what we asked for”. At the same time, an incentive plan for voluntary exits was also launched and the company "undertook to hire all the others who remain in the charge of Ilva without penalties and with article 18". The environmental plan has also greatly improved, “which leads to the acceleration of park coverage and a very strong limit on emissions. If Ilva wants to produce 8 million tons of steel, it must do so without increasing the existing emissions at all". As for the outcome of the workers' meetings, "we are confident", said the trade unionist.
Di Maio explained that thanks to the agreement, the tender for the award of Ilva will not be cancelled. Gara which, he argues, “didn't have the possibility of protecting the concrete and current public interest. The agreement ensures that the concrete and current public interest for the elimination of the tender is not realized”.
The minister stressed that the workers will be hired under Article 18. “From what was achieved at the table tonight, we can already say that there will be no Jobs Act in the company, that workers will be hired under article 18, that there will be 10.700 hires as a starting point and that there will be no redundancies: everyone will receive a job offer from Mittal".
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“I am very satisfied with the closure of the Ilva dispute, after a long and complex negotiation. All hired in the next three years and no redundancies: congratulations to my colleague Di Maio. He did better than those who preceded him. From words to deeds”. This is the comment of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini.
"Di Maio did a truly excellent job - said the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte - the path we built was very wise, we acquired the opinion of the Anac and the State Attorney's Office, obvious irregularities emerged, but canceling the race is not that simple. A formal defect is not enough, it is necessary to demonstrate that the public interest is better achieved through that annulment. The data that have been" disclosed "are of absolute excellence".
The agreement comes in extremis after the twists and turns of the last few months. In June, the commissioner was extended by three months, while in July the yellow-green government - with the new head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Luigi Di Maio - had asked to shed light on the regularity of the tender first to Anac and then to the Avvocatura di State.
The extraordinary management will end on 15 September and the new owners of Ilva – the Anglo-Indian ArcelorMittal, who had won the public tender in June 2017 – should take possession of the plants.
Tomorrow, Friday 7, the additional 15 days that Di Maio had given himself to decide whether the tender with which he was assigned to Am Investco (the consortium led by ArcelorMittal) would remain valid would have expired. A stumbling block that now seems to have been overcome, to the point that even the former owner of Economic Development, Carlo Calenda, congratulated Di Maio for having changed his mind:
A great day for #ILVA, for Italian industry and for Taranto. Environmental and industrial investments can finally start. Congratulations to companies and trade unions and non-formal congratulations to @luigidimaio who was able to change his mind and finally take the right path
- Carlo Calenda (@CarloCalenda) 6 September 2018
