A participatory, combative and nervous tension-filled strike took place today at the Leonardo plant in Grottaglie, which involved all the employees of Leonardo, LLS, LGS and the related companies Axist, Technoplants, Ivra, SVIB.
“Today’s strike mobilization of Leonardo and contract workers, called by Fim, Fiom and Uilm, is only the beginning of a path that will continue until we have certain answers on the future of the Grottaglie site which cannot depend exclusively on Boeing’s choices and which requires clear and concrete planning by Leonardo on the diversification process – say the territorial secretariats -. The very high participation in today’s strike, over 90% participation, is the clear demonstration that workers want to have certainties about their future. The meeting on June 24th must provide concrete answers on investments and new programs, in the absence of which we will continue with the fight initiatives”.
The procession of workers started spontaneously from inside the warehouse and reached the entrance of the plant and then proceeded to the area in front of the car park to demonstrate dissent with respect to managerial choices considered unworthy of a company like Leonardo SPA. There was no shortage of moments of tension with the police, despite the peaceful procession, which highlight a climate of strong concern among workers and which, in the absence of responses, could create further inconvenience and tension in an already severely stressed area from long and dramatically unresolved disputes. “We are determined and we will not stop! United in the fight to diversify production and guarantee a future for the Grottaglie site” state the FIM FIOM UILM Territorial Secretariats The RRSSUU Leonardo Grottaglie”.
“Today the workers of the Leonardo plant in Grottaglie went on strike to guarantee an industrial and employment future for the area. A fighting initiative that united all the workers on the site, both direct and contract workers, who with a single voice asked for credible solutions and investments to ensure the future of the plant – say Fim, Fiom and national Uilm -. The meeting with the company top management, the RSUs and the national and territorial secretariats of FIM-FIOM-UILM will take place in Rome on 24 June. A first date where we expect the company to sit at the table with the desire to identify solutions for a real path of diversification of activities that leads to full saturation of the site and guarantees full employment of all workers including those in related industries“. FIM-FIOM-UILM hope “that the national and local institutions will also support the workers’ struggle and urge the company to invest in a territory already devastated by major crises such as that of the former Ilva. A responsibility that has been lacking today and which has instead seen the institutions opposing the workers who “dared” to approach one of the places that will host the G7. The fight does not stop with the police but by giving concrete answers to those who risk not having a working future while maintaining the central presence of a company like Leonardo, owned by the State” they conclude.
The dispute in recent months has seen a crescendo of increasingly negative news since the beginning of the year. It culminated in the trade union meeting with Leonardo SPA on May 31st, considered completely unsatisfactory by the trade unions, “due to a corporate attitude that shows no discontinuity with respect to the real need to start a diversification process, apart from the usual slogans and announcements, as well as for behavior that is not at all inclusive and participatory with respect to choices that have a significant impact on employees”. During which the company communicated the managerial decision to suspend production activities for several months, perhaps four, without specifying the time limits of this decision. Confirming the serious difficulties that Boeing is experiencing which, in fact, resulted, from March to May 2024, in a difference of less than eight withdrawn sections compared to the expected plan, generating a total storage of 46 pairs of stopped sections inside the plant. As regards the new plan, the company representatives stated that it provides for 55 deliveries in 2024 compared to 87 deliveries expected, 45 deliveries for the year 2024 compared to 72 expected. Highlighting the need to postpone the break-even point of the budget to 2026. A situation, the current one, which demonstrates once again how an effective and far-sighted production diversification plan can no longer be postponed to overcome single-order and single-contract orders, which for unions cannot only concern the advancement of new activities (Vertical VX4, Proteus, Euromale).
Even during today’s strike the unions highlighted how more than everything that has been done in recent years by the entire group of workers (over 1300) could not have been done. The various union spokesmen reiterated through the megaphone that “we were first asked to demonstrate that we knew how to make the product and we made it better than others. Then they asked us to produce more efficiently, and we did this too, with the company which over the years has been managed by managers who have come and gone without keeping the promise of concretely implementing the production diversification of the site. During Covid we demonstrated that we know how to do other things besides the 787 program, but the current diversification is still insufficient and if it exists it is only the result of our struggles. They come to the meetings with an attitude of great arrogance, they show little transparency, when we expressed our doubts about the extra buffer production which would have inevitably eroded production, as is happening today, we were not listened to: then we ask ourselves, that increase in Was production needed to get your executive bonuses? Now they want to produce less to produce more next year and end up passing this on to the workers. When it comes to diversification, we always wait for others, first the market, then Boeing, but the truth is that they have no vision, direction, perspective. This factory belongs to the workers, also created with public funding from Apulian taxpayers. Our questions today are few but clear: where is the Strategic Pact? What happened to the program contracts? What returns are there on the plant? Beyond futuristic projects such as suborbital flights, we now want to know what will be done for this Apulian and national productive excellence: there are no excuses for all stakeholders, we no longer want election campaign promises and we will say so in the Region on 17 and then the meeting with the 24″ company.
The path is all too clear, and it has been traced.
(read the article https://www.corriereditaranto.it/2024/06/01/crisi-leonardo-stop-di-almeno-4-mesi/)
