Ex Ilva, hot area plants shut down. CGIL: “Meeting on negative layoffs”

"Since this morning there has been nothing left on." The general director of Acciaieria d'Italia in extraordinary administration Maurizio Saitta made this known during the meeting with the unions at the Ministry of Labour. A meeting which for the unions themselves was "negative": "We need all the doubts we have raised about this system to be removed from the table", explained Fim, Fiom and Uilm.

All the plants in the hot area of ​​the former Ilva have been turned off. "From this morning there is no longer anything going on", the general director of Acciaieria d'Italia in extraordinary administration Maurizio Saitta told the unions during the meeting at the Ministry of Labor on the redundancy fund. The procedures for shutting down the blast furnaces began in recent days after the ruling of the Court of Cassation, which confirmed the decree of the judges of Milan which established the stop of the hot area of ​​the Taranto plant.

The news provoked a reaction from the unions who today met at the Ministry of Labor for a meeting on the request for layoffs formulated by Acciaierie d'Italia, formerly Ilva, for 8,600 employees following the shutdown of the plants in the hot area. "The meeting did not go well at all", said Loris Scarpa, of Fiom CGIL, as he left the building at the end of the meeting. "We have told the ministry and the extraordinary administration that they must guarantee the continuity of the factories and also the salary continuity of the workers", Scarpa clarified, specifying that the unions do not accept "the idea whereby they decide to change the system of payment of workers' wages with direct payment from the INPS with repercussions on the workers". The general secretary of Fiom then added: "They were not able to give us all the guarantees we asked for regarding workers' wages, so the ministry adjourned the meeting until Tuesday. But the situation remains serious and we presume that there are no conditions to reach any type of agreement if they do not guarantee us a future recovery with work here".

As the unions Fim, Fiom and Uilm have announced, the meeting at the Ministry of Labor regarding the joint examination of the request for extraordinary redundancy payments for the over 8 thousand former Ilva workers has been rescheduled to Tuesday 10 November. “We need all the doubts we have raised about this system to be taken off the table,” explained the union signatures.

The government's choice to eliminate funds for decarbonisation was instead widely criticized by the general secretary of the Fim Cisl, Ferdinando Uliano, who contested the shift of the 720 million euros to other expenditure items. "A serious and unacceptable choice, in open contradiction with the commitments undertaken by the government with the trade union organisations", commented the leader of the trade union signature who recalled the commitments made on 27 October at Palazzo Chigi to address the crisis of the former Ilva Group, which involves over 15 thousand workers in direct and related employment. "Those commitments - he explained - have the aim of identifying concrete solutions to safeguard employment, prevent any dismissal process, guarantee production continuity and, above all, support a true industrial relaunch project based on decarbonisation".

Likewise, the opposition has defined the zeroing of funds for decarbonization as serious. A decision, declared the senators of Italia Viva Annamaria Furlan and Silvia Fregolent, which "risks definitively compromising the future of the Taranto plant and of the entire Italian steel industry". Antonio Misiani, head of Economy in the national secretariat and senator of the Democratic Party, is of the same opinion: "Last 27 October, at Palazzo Chigi, the executive had made precise commitments with the unions: to protect employment, avoid layoffs, guarantee production continuity and support an industrial relaunch based on the ecological transition. After a few days, those words are contradicted by the facts".