Ugo Calzoni, the unforgotten right-hand man of President Luigi Lucchini in Confindustria and later director general of ICE, remembers well the years between the XNUMXs and XNUMXs.
In his opinion, today's "historic rift" between Confindustria and Fiat has many features in common with the lack of communication between what happened then in Turin and what happened in the gray Confindustria building in Eur. Here is his point of view on the rift between Fiat and Confindustria, on its causes and effects.
FIRSTonline – Doctor Calzoni, Fiat's exit from Confindustria seems destined to revolutionize or distort the organization of private entrepreneurs: what will happen now? Can a business organization give up the largest and most representative Italian private industry without losing its mission?
CALZONI – The split between Fiat and Confindustria marks a historic turning point in the largest business organization in the country. The formal episode of the exit from Viale dell'Astronomia finds the ultimate reason in the emptying carried out by Confindustria on the guidelines on the subject of company contracts contained in article 8 of the financial maneuver: contents anticipated by the agreements, albeit majority, of Pomigliano and Mirafiori.
One has the impression of going back to 1980 when Fiat, under siege, rebelled with the march of 40.000 against the consociational practices in complete solitude even towards the leaders of the Confindustria of the time. Even then there was a President who said that actions limited to one company were underway in Turin and that these concerned Fiat and not the business world as a whole.
The blindness of that time is the same as Emma Marcegaglia's Confindustria by now interwoven with political-trade union compromises and bureaucratized in fact by a proposal for representation distant from the vital interests of international competition and from the widespread system of small and medium-sized industries.
FIRSTonline – The absence of Fiat is destined to increase the weight in Confindustria of the public groups whose leaders are politically appointed: will Confindustria become increasingly governmental?
CALZONI – For years in Confindustria and in many territories the connotations of the concrete representation of interests have been lost. The increasingly strong presence of the former state companies, those of services and municipal companies have stripped from the connective tissue of Confindustria those values that have always characterized private enterprise and the dynamism that it has guaranteed even to the social and economic mobility of the country .
FIRSTonline – How will Fiat's exit affect the forthcoming Confindustria electoral campaign for the succession to Emma Marcegaglia as president?
CALZONI – We will see the consequence of the Turin decision in the coming months. What is certain is that Emma Marcegaglia has dealt a mortal blow to the Confindustria known up to now. The turning point could come from a new Presidency characterized by a manufacturing entrepreneur tied to the market, with a consolidated history behind him, who considers that office the end of a successful human and "cursus aeconomicum" and not a platform for new jobs to be collected on the terrain of politics.
