Three sacked workers
at the centre of an escalating row with Fiat made a
fresh appeal for Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to
pressure the carmaker into respecting an order to rehire
them in a letter on Tuesday, reports ANSA.
Fiat fired the men in July for allegedly preventing
non-striking workers from doing their jobs, but the trio
won an appeal against the decision at a labour court on
August 9 and turned up for work on Monday.
Fiat, which is appealing against that ruling, admitted
them to its plant at the southern town of Melfi, but
refused to let them back on to the production line,
saying they had to stay in a room and could only do
union business.
The three are representatives of the FIOM union, which
is linked to the nation's biggest union CGIL and has
been critical of Fiat's recent drive to revamp working
practices and labour relations in Italy in a bid to
boost productivity. The men, Giovanni Barozzino, Antonio
Lamorte and Marco Pignatelli, said in the letter they
were appealing to Napolitano in his role of guarantor of
''democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law''.
Fiat is paying their salaries until the dispute is
resolved, but the men say they should be allowed to earn
their pay after rejecting the condition that they do
only union business. ''Mr President, we want to earn our
bread like every family man does and not be paid for not
working,'' the letter read. ''Fiat's decision not to let
us return to our jobs is a clear violation of article 28
of law 300/70 and of the criminal code''.
Indeed, FIOM lawyers said that they intended to press
criminal charges on Monday, when the workers first asked
Napolitano to act. The government intervened Tuesday via
Transport Minister Altero Matteoli, who called on the
carmaker to let the men go back to work. ''Court
sentences should be respected even when we don't like
them,'' Matteoli said. ''If there is the rule of law in
Italy, you can't pick and choose. ''There's a sentence.
It should be respected''.
The three were fired after they allegedly blocked a
robot arm supplying production lines, forcing 1,750
Melfi workers to down tools. The incident came during a
strike by 50 workers against planned cutbacks and longer
hours. Fiat has adopted an increasingly assertive stance
with workers and unions in Italy of late, saying plans
to increase production in its homeland will be shelved
unless it is accepted that big changes are needed to
survive in today's competitive markets. It is looking to
boost productivity and reduce strikes and absenteeism,
with flexible working procedures like those recently
adopted in a controversial plan for the Pomigliano
d'Arco plant near Naples. FIOM opposed the Pomigliano
accord, saying that, among other things, it infringes on
workers' right to strike.
Report courtesy of
ANSA
