strike and plant blockade

The industrial purification plants in Irpinia are shutting down again. The new block of activities decided by the 53 Asidep workers and their unitary trade union representatives will come into effect tomorrow. This is what was announced in a harsh official note that workers and internal references from Fiom, UilM and Fsmic sent to the Avellino Prefectureto the regional councilor for Labor, Antonio Marchiello, to the president of ASI, Pasquale Pisano, to the liquidator of the Consortium’s subsidiary, Giuseppe Dino Covino, to Confindustria Avellino and to the provincial and regional trade unions.

With 5 unpaid back wages and a negotiation on the dispute that has been stalled for two months, the protest is once again taking on an exasperated tone. «We cannot go on like this and given that the timescales of the justice to which we have turned are slow, from Thursday 2 May we will stop all the plants and we will be vigilant so as not to allow, as already happened in January, that the president ofAsynot caring about workers’ rights, hires external companies to make the protest useless.” According to workers and RSU Asi and Asidep are stuck in their denials, «wasting time and resources and waiting for some magician to come with a magic wand to solve the problems they have created and trying in every way to make the current 53 workers of the company pay purification”.

«With respect to the amount of debt into which the investee companies have been brought, we read in the letter, with one bankruptcy in progress, that of Cgs srl, and another on the way, that of Asidep, there is a deafening silence. Do they really think they will continue not to pay workers who have been without pay for five months and who have been living with their families in economic difficulty and uncertainty about the future for three years? In all of this, the institutions and control bodies do nothing, not even with respect to the change of cards on the table on the hypothesis of an agreement for which the Bankruptcy Court had granted an extension to the procedures until mid-April”. In short, full stop and resumption of the blockade of the plants with all the negative consequences on the service and the risk of environmental pollution.

«Let’s go back to the starting point, states the secretary of Fiom CGIL, Giuseppe Morsa – it would be appropriate for President Pisano to summon the parties to resume discussion from the agreement initially proposed which guaranteed employment levels, the payment of outstanding dues and the method of use of the social safety net. Without guarantees there is no agreement. The union cannot accept the hypothesis of a downsizing, especially given that there are all the conditions to support the maintenance of jobs, a functioning service and even further hiring. The problem is that we are in the presence of bad management that needs to change.” Meanwhile, problems are looming both for businesses and for possible environmental damage. «We are faced with a delicate issue, continues Morsa, both in terms of pollution and the difficulties that companies will have in disposing of their wastewater. But only the president of the ASI will be responsible for all this. It would be useful for the Prefecture to also strike a blow and try to recompose the table that last November 15th led to the signing of a pact that was later disregarded, also calling into question the Campania Region which remains absent despite requests. A debate should also develop within the assembly of mayors of the Consortium, starting from the fact that a different solution is possible.”

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Read the full article at
The morning