Industry: CGIL and FIOM Sicily and Messina ask for clarity on the future Duferco steelworks in Giammoro (Me)

Company-union meeting on 9 May. No to the decommissioning of the plant. CGIL and Fiom also call the regional government into question, asking it to intervene in the matter

Messina, 23 April – In July the zero-hour social safety net for workers at the Duferco steelworks in Giammoro (Me) will run out. As the deadline approaches, CGIL and Fiom from Sicily and Messina have asked the company to discuss the prospects of the plant and the meeting is set for 9 May. “These latest social safety nets – write in a note the general secretaries of the CGIL Sicily and Messina, Alfio Mannino and Pietro Patti, and the secretaries of the Sicilian and Messina Fiom, Francesco Foti and Daniele David – began in February, but since 2011 Duferco made seamless use of redundancy payments and solidarity contracts, even in 2022, when the group saw growth in added value and dividends for shareholders”. The unions ask the CEO, Tonino Gozzi, for “clear words on the production future of the plant and the employment fate of over 300 workers, both direct and related”.
However, CGIL and Fiom also call into question the local administrations and the regional government “whose silence – they claim – is disconcerting. The regional councilor for Productive Activities, Edy Tamajo, – say the secretaries of CGIL and Fiom – should have summoned us last November, but so far nothing, he hasn’t even asked a private group that intercepts the public resources of the Pnrr to account for his actions , or 70% of the resources made available for the production of hydrogen, while taking away wages and employment prospects from an already abundantly impoverished and plundered territory”.
“We expect a position and a decisive intervention from the regional institutions”, say Mannino, Patti, Foti and David. If clear production and employment prospects were not to emerge for the Sicilian site – they underline – with the mere maintenance of the headquarters to drain Pnrr resources, we would find ourselves faced with another entrepreneurial operation that leaves nothing for Sicily. In this and other critical cases that concern the future of the industry, the regional government cannot stand by and watch.”
The secretaries of CGIL and Fiom speak of “the creeping decommissioning of the plant initiated some time ago by Duferco and regularly – they underline – reported by us. A choice – they note – also confirmed by recent investments in energy and logistics. Where – they ask – is the industrial plan for the Giammoro steelworks? What relaunch of production is envisaged and what new specialization is necessary in view of the outsourcing of entire sectors (tool making, straightening, daily maintenance) and the transfer of the more commercial profiles to the northern plants?”. Furthermore, CGIL and Fiom hypothesize that the site will be left in these conditions also to prevent, given the strategic infrastructure of the area, the establishment of any competitor”.
To CEO Gozzi, “who is also a member of the President of Confindustria’s team – observe CGIL and Fiom – and who gives rapid-fire interviews claiming, as in the case of Ilva, certainty on the industrial level, who asks the Government for a policy that confirms the ‘steel as a strategic asset and, rightly, and claims a large operation truth, we ask for certainties on the future of the Giammoro plant – concludes the note – the only one permanently laid off and to have seen investments halved in the last 5 years. For our part, we will do what is necessary to prevent yet another social disaster from affecting this area.