Ex Ilva, 24-hour strike in all factories. Sit-ins and blockades in Taranto, procession in Genoa

From Taranto to Genoa, the workers of the former Ilva are mobilizing on the occasion of the 24-hour national strike proclaimed by Fim, Fiom, Uilm and Usb for today, Monday 12 October, to say no to the shutdown of the plants and with the unions which do not exclude that the same mobilization could be extended in the following days.

In recent days Acciaieria d'Italia under extraordinary administration has decided to suspend all production activities of the plants in the hot area of ​​the Taranto plant and announced the temporary shutdown, from 15 November, of the Genoa and Novi Ligure plants.

Assembly and procession in Genoa

Heavy vehicles and many workers lined up, already in the early hours of the morning, in front of the gatehouse of the former Ilva in Cornigliano where a meeting called after the commissioners' decision to stop the plants took place. Present were the mayor Silvia Salis, the deputy mayor Terrile and the parliamentarians Pastorino and Furlan.

"There is no industrial reason to treat the Northern factories in this way when the market requires their processing: an agreement on the international markets for the supply of raw materials would be enough and the problem would not exist", said Salis, moving in a procession together with the workers towards Genoa.

"Today is an important day because we want a very clear message to arrive from Genoa: we don't want the factory to close, we want it to continue working because it makes a highly requested product that we would otherwise import from abroad", underlined the president of the Region, Marco Bucci, who arrived in Cornigliano.

Sit-ins and blockades in Taranto

The mobilization of workers from Adi in As, Ilva in As and related industries is also underway in Taranto. In the Ionian capital, a two-hour meeting took place in the management car park in which the union secretaries took stock of the dispute. Then a group of workers and delegates occupied a stretch of state road 106 towards the Eni refinery. Other road blocks are not ruled out and protest initiatives could continue in the coming days

In Taranto, production activity is at a standstill with the plants on standby awaiting the ruling from the Court of Cassation on 20 October on the closure of the hot processing area. The workers are asking the government for guarantees on their future which cannot be limited to the continuation of the redundancy fund without a real prospect of returning to work. The unions ask for concrete commitments for "an industrial decarbonisation plan that concerns all sites, for a social plan that protects direct workers, contract workers and in Ilva AS also with extraordinary and compensation tools, for direct intervention by the State as guarantor of the transition and employment protection".