Workers OK new industrial plan at Fiat plant
- Source: Xinhua
- [08:19 January 17 2011]
- Comments
Workers at Fiat's central factory in Turin voted Saturday to approve a new industrial plan aimed at modifying the work contract and enhancing the firm's productivity.
The plan, passed by a majority of 2,735 workers, or 54.1 percent of the votes in a referendum, stands as a crucial turning-point for Fiat. In this way, the workers have definitely given thumbs-up to the management's new contract conditions for the launch of a new industrial plan aimed at investing some one billion euros ($1.33 billion) in the Turin plant's production system.
Among the important measures envisaged in the new working contract are more work shifts, less absence from work, compulsory training courses, reduced work pauses, limits to the number of strikes and an increase in overtime.
Fiat had previously warned that if the referendum failed, it would have been forced to invest abroad, outsource jobs and close Turin's historical plant of Mirafiori.
The Turin factory investment is part of a wider 20-billion-euro ($26.7 billion) project that Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has launched to double Italian production by 2014 and create a global brand together with Chrysler, which partially is owned by Fiat.
