No agreement was reached at the Ministry of Labor by metalworkers' unions and Italian steelworks on the extraordinary redundancy fund requested by the company for 8,622 employees following the shutdown of the plants in the hot area of the Taranto steelworks. The only point made clear, after several hours of discussion, is that even though the INPS pays the redundancy fund to the workers directly, rather than Acciaierie anticipating it as has happened up to now - an advance which will not be made since the company no longer has resources -, the payment deadline will always be that of the salary. Which for AdI employees is the 12th of every month. And so on November 12th salaries will be paid regularly by the company since the accounting refers to October, the month in which work was still being done in the former Ilva as there was no highlight of the shutdown. And therefore the use of the cash register was lower than what is expected from now on with the factory almost completely at a standstill. Instead, from 12 December, and so for subsequent deadlines, the INPS will be in place, which will directly provide the redundancy fund to staff suspended from work by the Steelworks. Employees will therefore have the INPS credit from the fund while on the same date they will receive from the company the payslip relating to any hours worked and the economic integration of the fund. The latter is financed by the State until June, is provided by Acciaierie and allows you to have a salary that is 70 percent of your salary. The new fund will start from the decree of the Ministry of Labor and will last until next February unless extended.
«Many hours of discussion» at the Ministry of Labor but «they were useful to make both INPS and the company make precise commitments to better manage this painful and dramatic cash register», says Guglielmo Gambardella of Uilm, confirming the lack of union-company agreement. «I believe there has never been a dispute with this group of affected workers in the context of industrial crisis disputes - notes Gambardella -. The company has made an important commitment in terms of communications and obligations that it must make to INPS to ensure that payments are made on time for the next deadlines. We cannot afford even a day's delay in disbursement of the subsidy."
For Valerio D'Alò of Fim Cisl, «beyond the commitments undertaken, the future remains important. We heard about the race. We are happy that there is an Italian group, Arvedi, whose solidity and seriousness we know. We are also seeing other investments in the area, but there is a need to have the meeting at Palazzo Chigi so that these aspects are clarified. We requested this meeting which is an important starting point. The social aspects are still missing from the point of view of the strenuous jobs as we were promised, the incentives for the exodus are also missing, but all this is not the solution, because you get out of the redundancy fund with work" and in the Taranto area "we need to relaunch the production of eco-compatible steel rather than going after sirens that only lead to desertification".
«We said that there were no conditions to agree on a fund for 8,622 people», underlines Loris Scarpa of Fiom CGIL. Furthermore, he continues, «we have no response to all our other requests, both social and regarding health, safety and the environment. It will still be a long process of discussion. We hope that the next meeting at Palazzo Chigi will be as soon as possible and we can begin to gain some clarity."
Finally, for Franco Rizzo of USB «what we expected didn't happen. We would have liked to open the discussion on the proposals we have put forward to alleviate redundancies: incentives for redundancy, recognition of strenuous work and asbestos, public utility work and early retirement. It would also have been necessary to go into the merits of the changes that, in our opinion, should be made to the decree currently being converted on extraordinary measures intended for the contract. None of this."
