Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has however faced off the threat of action in typically combative mood. The one day strike, organised by the influential Fiom Cgil union, is set to affect the carmaker's key plants across Italy.

Fiom has been  at the forefront of attempts to halt the realigning of Italian Fiat workers' rights and was the only union to implacably oppose the slew of recent new employment contracts negotiated at the Mirafiori, Grugliasco and Pomigliano d'Arco plants.

In comments made this week, Landini implied that the penny has finally dropped that the much vaunted Fabbrica Italia project that called for a massive 20 billion euro investment by Fiat in Italy was never much more than hot air - never mind that the perpetually struggling carmaker couldn't ever hope to raise the required capital. "The Fabbrica Italia plan doesn’t exist anymore, there are no new models, market share is falling and temporary layoffs are increasing," said Landini. "Fiat workers, not its managers, want to keep the company in Italy."

The union has pitched itself up squarely against Marchionne and reflects its fears that Fiat could transfer vehicle production away from its traditional heartland of Italy. With productivity and the cost per worker languishing in Italy switching production to countries able to offer lower wages and greater efficiencies is an option for Fiat's management as it tries to stem losses.

"The strike is a very, very, very bad idea,” Marchionne told reporters in Turin, reported the Bloomberg new agency. "You are telling someone who wants to invest in the country that you’re not willing to participate and you are trying to impose conditions on the investments which you can’t control." He added that he believed that most of Fiat's Italian workforce supported the new contracts.

Marchionne withdrew Fiat's membership of Italian employers' organisation Confindustria after expressing his unhappiness with a deal signed last month that toned down significant new legislation that would have made it easier for companies to hire and terminate employment contracts, changes which he strongly feels will disadvantage Fiat internationally. "Fiat, which is engaged in the creation of a major international group with 181 plants in 30 countries, cannot afford to operate in Italy in an environment of uncertainty that is so incongruous with the conditions that exist in the industrialised world," he said in a statement issued by Fiat in Turin on October 3.