Pininfarina deal leads to trade union row on flexibility

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"Flexibility" continues to divide the Italian trade union movement. In the metalworking sector, the Fiom-Cgil union federation has refused to sign an agreement on hiring 200 workers on fixed-term contracts concluded in March 1999 by the Fim-Cisl and Uilm-Uil federations with Pininfarina, an automobile component company.

Pininfarina is a well-known automobile body-part producer located in Turin, which has designed successful cars for the world's most important car manufacturers, including some of most famous models of the past 50 years. During the past 10 years, Pininfarina has improved its productive capacity and now produces special cars with innovative bodies using other companies' products for the engine components. Following the example of other Italian design companies which have signed important agreements with Japan ese producers, Pininfarina has recently concluded a deal with Mitsubishi- the Japanese car industry giant - for the production of an all-terrain vehicle to sell on the European market. Under the agreement, the production of this new car should take place in a new plant located in Bairo Canavese (Piedmont).

On 12 March 1999, Pininfarina management and the representatives of the main metalworking sector trade union federations, Fiom-Cgil, Fim-Cisl and Uilm-Uil, met to discuss how to hire the workers at the new plant. Roberto Mazzucco, the company's labour relations manager, announced that, from September-October 1999, the new plant would employ 450 workers to produce 160 cars a day. It was proposed that, of the 450 workers, 200 would be hired on fixed-term contracts (for a duration of eight months, renewable for another seven to eight months), 100 workers would be hired on work/training contracts, 120 would come from the San Giorgio Canavese (Turin) plant and 30 would come from the Grugliasco (Turin) plant. The 150 workers from San Giorgio and Grugliasco had been recruited on fixed-term contracts on the basis of an agreement signed in 1997. Their contracts had later been made open-ended, in view of the opening of the new plant at Bairo.

At the end of the meeting, Fim-Cisl and Uilm-Uil signed the agreement approving this plan (which also provides for an evaluation of the situation in July 1999), while the representative of Fiom-Cgil asked for some time to discuss the situation internally. After a meeting between the trade union organisations held on 24 March, Fiom-Cgil announced at a press conference on 30 March that it would not sign the agreement.

The critical point which led Fiom to refuse to sign the agreement was the decision to hire 200 workers on fixed-term contracts. Giorgio Cremashi, secretary of Fiom's Piedmont region, and Laura Spezia, secretary of Fiom's Ivrea (Turin) branch, said that their organisations would not sign the agreement because "a plant cannot open with just short-term recruitment. We cannot accept the logic of hire and fire. We want to discuss the situation with all the Pininfarina plants." The lack of guarantees on the future prospects of the 200 workers was a further motivation not to accept the agreement ("we do not sign without guarantees"), they declared.

The motivations of the organisations which did sign the agreement relate mainly to employment. The new plant would be built in the Canavese area, an area of Piedmont which suffers from unemployment (with a rate of 11%), largely due to the crisis of the Olivetti group. Domenica Raschelli of Uilm asserted that "we cannot afford to lose further jobs." Gianni Vizio, regional secretary of Fim, stated that "the role of the unions is not to prevent companies from hiring new workers but to intervene if there are problems to confirm the jobs." Moreover, he said that "when a company invests important amounts of money to open a plant such as the one in Bairo, there are of course guarantees that its productive activities will not be suspended. The Pininfarina proposal is not the ideal but it is serious and well-balanced."

This policy of hiring new workers on fixed-term contracts now seems consolidated at Pininfarina. As mentioned above, the workers previously hired at San Giorgio and Grugliasco were employed on fixed-term contracts which were later transformed into open-ended contracts in 85%-90% of cases. Pininfarina seems to be following a recent general tendency in Italian industry, by keeping a "productive capacity reserve" in the Bairo plant in order to deal with excess personnel in the event of fluctuating demand, a situation that can always occur in a competitive market such as that for cars.

Pininfarina is a company that has political "clout" in Italy because its owner, Andrea Pininfarina, is the president of Federmeccanica, the metalworking employers' federation, which is at present engaged in a difficult negotiations with the national representatives of Fim, Fiom and Uilm over the renewal of the sector's national collective agreement (IT9902243F). This political clout has probably influenced the outcome of the negotiations over the opening of the new plant, and the disagreement betwen the metalworkers' unions will inevitably have consequences for the results of the national bargaining.