Already from its first settlement in Grottaglie, the industrial site of Leonardo (formerly Finmeccanica) appeared to have been “dedicated” to the single-commissioning of Boeing and the single-contract on the B787 project.
It was then predicted that the aircraft’s construction program would ensure thirty years of full plant activity and total saturation of workloads. So the required production diversification lost all priority and, until 2019, was not considered an immediate urgency. After 2019, having reached the peak of direct and indirect employment “on site” (1,325 employees plus related industries) and the maximum number of fuselages produced and delivered (14 pairs/month), a long negative period began, due to a series of circumstances already widely observed and analysed. And, unfortunately, the adverse economic situation has continued to this day.
I don’t want to go back to the news of these last months, but I put forward the hypothesis that the local establishment has gone from the “protective consecration” of the past to the “functional expendability” of now. Therefore, with a plausible exercise of indication and attribution of this last conjecture, perhaps it is possible to understand the current situation of the Leonardo dispute, in a further and different way from the many interpretations given and the multiple current analyses. In this case, with such a reading scheme, the propensity towards “expendability” for the maintenance of single-order work in the Grottaglie factory would completely exclude the Union, because this has always been “on the front line” to absolutely defend the work and the workers of the factory . Boeing, for obvious strategic and expedient reasons, instead seems to want to keep the international supply chain for the assembly of the B787 intact, operational and close to itself; therefore his propensity towards the “expendability” of the purpose of the Italian Plant would be high and strongly correlated to the specific interest. Leonardo, nevertheless, is required to respect the contractual commitments undertaken and must maintain certain balances in its global relationships, so the relative propensity towards the “expendability” of its own territorial site exclusively for the B787 contract could remain persistent and pushed into perspective .
At this point and never forgetting the public funding granted and invested with the 2005 Program Agreement, all that remains is to ask (and this is no small thing) from the local authorities, the Region, the competent Ministries (also through the political parties) , if, in contrast to the widespread scenario of “expendability”, it is rather their intention to sit down and discuss at an institutional table with Leonardo and the Metalworking Unions, to evaluate all the possibilities of concrete release and “relaunch” of the Aerostructures site in Grottaglie. And it is precisely in this sense that the Union has sent its last and definitive message: what is happening requires us to plan a production diversification that can no longer be postponed; we will not be able to support other solutions that only manage the contingent phase.
Raffaele Bagnardi
Former Mayor of Grottaglie
