Italy - Fiat union leaders look at Germany for new contract model - September 20, 2010

Trade union leaders want carmaker Fiat to provide job guarantees and give workers a greater say in company policy to win their support of the company’s efforts to boost productivity. Union leaders at Fiat's leading Italian plant at Melfi in the southern region of Basilicata are looking at German carmakers such as Volkswagen in providing a model for a deal between employer and workers to fight fierce competition from lower labour cost countries. “In the German model one can see how it is possible to be competitive even with salaries which are much higher than in Italy,” the secretary general of the CISL union for Basilicata told a group of foreign reporters (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 3 July-August 2010).

English: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/Fiat-unions ...

via  http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=Italy

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.