Marchionne: Fiat staying in Italy – if possible
Responding to demands for clarification of Fiat’s future investment plans and accusations of being anti-Italian, Sergio Marchionne took time out from the Confindustria convention in Turin to talk to reporters.
“As much as possible, we mean to maintain workplaces in Italy,” Marchionne said. He later added “It is impossible to specify right now the details of the investments, site for site, that will happen now between and 2014. To us it does not seem logical, therefore, that Fiat must supply details of multi-year forecasts when the majority of the European nations are trying desperately to agree on solutions that the international financial markets demand for tomorrow.”
“The anti-italian accusations that I have often heard are simply absurd,” said Marchionne. “Anti-Italian is not he who abandons the country; who decides not to invest. Anti-Italian is the one who does not want to take note of the world around him and prefers us to remain isolated in the past. Anti-Italian is the one who wastes time discussing the problems, who does not assume the responsibility to change things, to look ahead and to act.”
Warming to his theme, Marchionne continued, “Anti-Italian is the one who adopts illegal behavior; who does not respect the rules; who violates the rights of the citizens and businesses. Fiat, as with all the industrial companies of the world, must be able to count on minimal conditions of competitiveness: on those we must be firm. The agreements that we have signed with the majority of the unions and the workers serve to guarantee these conditions.”
“They serve,” concluded Marchionne, “only to make to the factory work better, without harming the workers’ rights.”
Marchionne also directly attacked FIOM, the Italian metalworkers’ union that staged a one-day sit-in in Rome’s Peoples Square last Friday to protest Fiat’s new labor agreements.
“The position of FIOM always has been preconceived, anachronistic, fed from an old antagonism, and more worried about protecting its own power than the collective interest,” Marchionne said. “And when the agreements that we have reached with the other labor organizations have been voted and approved directly by the majority of the workers, not only has FIOM not respected the will freely expressed, but we have had to fight a lawsuit.”
Marchionne said, “The truly offensive thing in all this is that we are living in a period of tyranny of the minority.”
