Ex Ilva, clearing in Taranto: road blocks removed immediately, strike ends at 11pm

In Taranto, the strike of former Ilva and related contract workers, which has been underway since Monday with road blocks on the state roads to Bari and Reggio Calabria, ends this evening at 11pm. Instead, the road blocks are immediately removed, including the one in front of the Eni refinery in Taranto. This is to allow the exit of the tankers, given that fuel is running very low at the service stations in Puglia and at the Apulian airports. This was decided by the assembly of workers and union representatives held this morning on the state road to Bari near the steelworks.

Some voices of dissent were raised from the workers at the meeting - "we have nothing" - but the unions insisted that there should be no divisions in view of the next deadlines and highlighted the results obtained in the meantime. That is, the meeting at Palazzo Chigi on 27 October at 5pm and yesterday's agreement in the Region which commits all local institutions to the union demands, starting from the decarbonisation of the factory and extraordinary tools for workers: economic incentives for facilitated and early redundancy and early retirement for exposure to asbestos and pollutants,

"We must move forward by building our proposal for the meeting on 27 October at Palazzo Chigi - says Luigi Bennardi of Uilm - and we must go there with strength, compactness, unity and presence. That presence which in these days of mobilization on the streets we would have liked to see more intense, also because we are at a significant turning point". “We must be united, otherwise we will be losers” claims a union delegate. For Francesco Brigati of Fiom Cgil, "we obtained the summons to Chigi with our determination, it is an achievement but not a solution. We have some stages: the Court of Cassation on 20 October, then at Palazzo Chigi on the 27th, then, again, the filing of AdI's offers by 9 November. We must maintain constant pressure".

“Yesterday's result is the result of the sacrifice of all the workers and such an important result must not be diminished”, highlights Biagio Prisciano of the Fim Cisl regarding the agreement in the Puglia Region and the convocation of the Government. "We needed to have our platform shared by all the political forces in the Region and it was absolutely not easy to do so - explains Prisciano -. Up to now the Government has always told us that it could not do things because the Region did not want it, or the Municipality of Taranto and the Province of Taranto did not want it, but now this is no longer the case. There are no more alibis for the Government, all politics at all levels is on our positions. And we will go to Rome on 27 October with all the workers. We therefore have the need to arrive recharged by that date. And if the responses are not adequate on the 27th, we will have to start again with the meeting in Chigi because of the pressure from Taranto. "It's not possible - Prisciano then states - that in recent days we've always seen the same faces at the protests, but it doesn't work that way, where are everyone else? Because if the Government has summoned us, it's thanks to the mobilization of those who have been on the streets. It becomes a single body".

Meanwhile, Acciaierie d'Italia is communicating to many employees that they are being laid off at zero hours. The provision would have already concerned the Milan office and is also extending to Taranto. Meanwhile, the staff of AdI's Taranto research center have been on forced holidays for a week. Most likely the communication of the zero-hours fund is a prelude to a new extraordinary layoff procedure by the company. The new cash request could be sent as early as today, perhaps in the afternoon, as the company has prepared it. Currently the fund is authorized for 4,500 employees in the group, of which 3,800 in Taranto, but days ago AdI sent the unions a new cash procedure for the Salerno site which involves 38 out of 40 employees, almost all of them.