The sudden slip-up that grounded Ilva, which had started on the right path, re-proposed the question of industrial relations in a large group intent on relaunching it as it was, a few years ago, in Melfi with Fiat. The liturgies that have re-emerged in trade union behavior and the slightly populist harshness unleashed by Minister Calenda on the steps of the ministry in Via Veneto must not mislead or leave the pre-election harvest to macerate in the vats for too long.
Acelor Mittal and the Marcegaglia are not steel amateurs like the Algerians from Piombino. They have always been clear in terms of the amount of steel to be produced and the personnel needed. Ilva's environmental and structural constraints added up in the analyzes to the strategy of a Group which has been present for years in all European countries and which has certainly calibrated the new Italian commitment to the overall development of its empire and to the natural variables of the cycles market.
We have repeatedly written on FIRSTonline that this was the "border" of the Arcelor-Mittal-Marcegaglia proposal. Jindal's consortium would have had more free hands on the rich European and Mediterranean markets, not having any production facilities in the old continent. But the numbers, the offer and the planning skills of the Arcelor group have won, even if only slightly, over Jindal's proposal alongside that of not insignificant Italian entrepreneurs.
Today Arcelor presented an industrial plan in the logic of "full ownership" which means responsibility with respect to the objective of balancing the accounts capable of safeguarding wages, investments and competitiveness. The number of people employed goes back to 10.000 compared to the 8 on offer. The surpluses will be guaranteed by the Ilva Commissariata in activities aimed at the environment and to an extent such as to safeguard income.
The crux and the "wonder" of the Minister are based on Arcelor's decision to hire all employees from scratch, to reset a series of institutions and rules inherited from the public Ilva and then from the Rivas. Measures that indiscriminately affect de facto wages, known and lesser known niches of privilege, and to use the Jobs Act legislation in legal relations between the parties. Anyone with experience of trade union disputes knows that Arcelor's position lends itself to negotiation .
Positioning on...the hill serves to prepare a confrontation from which the company can quickly return to governing all the production factors that are closely connected to the competitiveness of a product that has lost, for example, the Fiat customer over the years: i.e. a million cars with its built-in steel.
Anyone who thinks they can cancel the tender and be able to mend a relationship with Jindal is deluding themselves by hiding the fact that, if recalled to Taranto, the Indian, Arvedi from Cremona and Del Vecchio from Belluno would be induced to turn a blind eye and re-propose "in toto ” the old proposals.
It is more realistic to begin negotiations with discretion with the primary objective of concretely safeguarding real "wages" and not the agreements connected to them of a political-union nature. Then an agreement must be found to put the company back in the conditions of planning investments and flexibility in services (port, logistics and handling) that all the steel industry enjoys in the world. Finally, the lesson that will emerge from Taranto will have to make us rethink a general policy for Italian steel threatened by Chinese dumping, by the protectionism of many markets and by the wound that does not heal in Piombino.
