LAWN. Alessandro Bastagliowner of Lineapiù, the company that produces knitting yarns and employs over 120 people, had begun to get its hands on more than a year and a half ago. «We are in deep trouble, costs are now out of control. Tell me how we can move forward » she said at the end of October 2022 to Il Sole 24 Ore.
A year and a half later the fears have come true and the workers risk paying the price. At the end of May Lineapiù has started the procedure for the dismissal of 30 employees, practically one in four. The news, thanks to the ongoing electoral campaign, went somewhat unnoticed and is re-emerging now, while discussions with the union are underway to understand if there will really be any dismissals. The matter is followed by Filctem CGIL of Prato with its secretary Juri Meneghetti because, despite the Lineapiù headquarters being a few meters beyond the provincial border, in the territory of the municipality of Campi Bisenzio, the company has always been part of the Prato textile district and its employees largely come from the province of Prato, as well as from Florentine plain.
As soon as it received the notification of the opening of the procedure, the union met with the owners and asked that they resort to social safety nets, a bit of redundancy pay to understand if it is possible to overcome the crisis and start again, possibly reducing the number of redundancies . The latter are spread across all departments of the company.
At the moment there is a stalemate. Filctem’s request was not formally accepted and the parties will have to meet again in the next few days. If the agreement were not found, it would be a bitter summer for around thirty families
Ownership blames energy price increases
In October 2022 Alessandro Bastagli had raised the alarm about soaring energy costs. «Our external processes, from winding to twisting to spinning – he explained – can no longer cope with these costs. Two of them will close their business at the end of the year, two will inform us of the price increases from month to month based on the energy tables of the industrial association, two others have already applied increases of 30 to 40%”.
The bills of Lineapiù, which owns two internal spinning mills and a dye house, increased in 2022: the methane bill went from 166,681 to 991,000 euros, the electricity bill from 373,061 to 760,000 euros. The cost of water went from 161,885 euros to 238,423.
This did not prevent Bastagli from opening the company to collaboration with the Buzzi Institute, at the beginning of 2023, to compensate for the retirement of around ten spinning workers, and from renewing the dyeing machine fleet. And to move the headquarters of A.Moda, another of his companies, from Scarperia to Capalle, in front of the Lineapiù headquarters, to make the movement of goods easier.
Now, however, the flare-up of high energy prices seems to have passed, but evidently the problems were structural and the problems are now coming home to roost. Negotiations with the union on redundancies are expected to take a long time.
