Until September, at least at the Stellantis plant in Mirafiori, the production of new cars will stop. After having signed solidarity contracts for a thousand Maserati workers until December, Stellantis has decided to use the same social safety nets for around 1.200 500e employees, until August 4th. Then the factory south of Turin will close for holidays until September.
Stellantis, Mirafiori closes until September
The unions have in fact announced that they have accepted Stellantis' offer of "solidarity" contracts from 23 April to 4 August for the 1.174 employees employed by Mirafiori who work on the production of Fiat 500 electric, one of the few cars still produced at the plant. Car production at Mirafiori had already been greatly reduced, with this latest decision it will stop until September, when the plant will reopen. In the first 2 months of 2024, only 12 thousand cars were produced in Mirafiori, 50% less than in the same period of 2023. The model has great difficulties on the market, also due to the performance of a "homemade" battery that the CEO Tavares has already announced that he wants to review.
It should also be remembered that since the beginning of the year the 2.260 Mirafiori workers have been on redundancy pay and until March 30th they worked only one shift. Just at the end of last month, Stellantis had signed an agreement with the unions for the incentivized voluntary exit of around 2.500 workers, including 300 Mirafiori workers.
“Unfortunately it was in the air that for the employees of the electric 500, after those of Maserati, there would be a structural request for social safety nets. We signed exclusively to guarantee income support for the workers", explained Edi Lazzi of the Fiom CGIL of Turin. The leader of the CGIL also spoke on the Mirafiori issue Maurizio Landini to underline that on Stellantis “there is an open problem. There was also a strike, but the issue concerns the country and the automotive and mobility sector". He therefore asks that “the government do what they are doing in other countries where cars are produced. There is a need for the CEO of Stellantis to be summoned and at that meeting, in front of the government and unions, commitments regarding investments and products be made. It is necessary to avoid a process that risks calling into question a significant part of the manufacturing sector. There is a need to implement those industrial policies that have been missing for years in strategic sectors."
«The signature is necessary to preserve the maximum possible number of jobs, guarantee a dignified transition path and for the best income protection. However, it is increasingly urgent for the government to intervene with an ad hoc industrial policy for the sector and for all the 500 models to be allocated to Mirafiori as soon as possible", commented the union secretary Fismic Turin, Sara Rinaudo.
“The transition to the extraordinary redundancy fund through the solidarity contract – comments Rocco Cutrí, general secretary of the Fim Cisl Turin – highlights how the decline in Stellantis production in Turin is increasingly structural. Beyond the acceptable quality of the instrument used to protect the incomes of male and female workers, the need for an industrial solution that overcomes the wait-and-see attitude regarding purchase incentives is unfortunately not yet available although announced and re-announced several times by the government. We are almost at the end of the national discussions, we expect Stellantis to abandon all hesitation and present in the next few days projects that can be industrialized in the short or medium term which will ensure, starting from Mirafiori, production to reach one million vehicles in our country. The government should make every possible effort towards an agreement that ensures production for our country and that the company is more sensitive to social responsibility towards this community".
