The meeting between Leonardo’s top management, the RSU and the territorial and national secretariats of Fim Fiom Uilm continues at the Industrial Union of Rome. Small advances have been made compared to the path started last June 24th, in particular the need to involve the Helicopters division was shared to have all the elements on the investments, timing and employment impacts on the territory of the arrival of the final assembly of Leonardo’s AW609 tiltrotor in Italy. “The arrival of the tiltrotor is a huge achievement resulting from the workers’ struggles and their extremely high capacity to make a product that is unique in the world,” the unions commented. The Taranto plant’s diversification process also includes cutting-edge programs such as the Eurodrone wing, the fuselage of Vertical Aerospace’s VX4 electric aircraft, and the fuselage of Leonardo’s Proteus remote-controlled helicopter prototype. Also in Grottaglie, the new MaTeRIA Lab (Materials Technology Research and InnovAtion Lab) has taken shape, a joint research laboratory between Leonardo and the Solvay group dedicated to the development of new composite materials and new production processes, which are essential for the future of the aerospace industry. Meanwhile, the premises intended to host the Aerotech Campus are being set up, a high-level training course for engineering graduates, whose first edition in Grottaglie is scheduled for the 2024/2025 academic year.
However, there remain differences regarding how to use the tools to manage the contingent phase. The company, while reiterating that the plant will not stop, continued to maintain that to best manage 2025 it must suspend only Boeing production (to align production volumes with reduced needs in the short term) and declared that he will open the redundancy fund procedure today. Fim Fiom and Uilm instead believe that the best solution is to “slow down activities without stopping to ensure protection also for workers in related industries”.
The discussion is still open and another meeting will be held on July 15. In the next few days, the RSU together with the territorial secretariats of Fim Fiom Uilm will hold meetings with the workers to evaluate any actions to be implemented. For Fim Fiom and Uilm “the solidity of the industrial plan and the guarantees, economic and in terms of professional development, for the workers of the Grottaglie site and related industries are of fundamental importance”.
We recall that last June 1st the company had illustrated to the unions the future objectives of the new Z60 plan sent by Boeing and the production situation of the plant, confirming the serious difficulties that Boeing is going through which, in fact, have led, from March to May 2024, to a difference of minus eight sections withdrawn compared to the planned plan, generating a total storage of 46 pairs of sections stopped inside the plant. As regards the new plan, the company representatives had stated that it would foresee 55 deliveries in 2024 compared to 87 deliveries planned, 45 preparations for the year 2024 compared to 72 planned, with the consequent suspension of production activities for four months without, however, specifying the time frame, which the company needs to postpone the break-even point to 2026. A plan that, however, as the unions themselves recalled, still provides for 5 withdrawals per month (hence the request to the company to find alternative ways to the four-month closure that balance the objective need for buffer disposal with a suitable and congruent production pace). Without forgetting, as the unions themselves recalled, that the extra buffer production imposed by the company in the past has inevitably ended up eroding the current one. A crisis that also falls on the workers of the related companies, who are those who suffer the effects of what is happening even more than the direct workers.
What has been considered a flagship of our territory’s production and a model throughout the country since 2006, seems to be experiencing its most difficult historical phase. For this reason, its downsizing is not even remotely imaginable or conceivable. Leonardo is a state-owned company, so it is up to all politicians, from the government to the Region to the Ionian province together with the trade unions, to continue to pursue every possible path to protect the thousands of jobs at stake and safeguard a production site that must remain essential in the local, regional and national panorama.
(read the article https://www.corriereditaranto.it/2024/06/24/leonardo-grottaglie-futuro-in-chiaroscuro/)
