Italy faces ‘Mamma Fiat’ woes

At age 21, Gianluca Rindone got his first job building bodies for Fiat’s Maserati cars with his father, a Sicilian who was attracted by the auto craze in Turin in the 1970s. He thought that it would be a long career but after three decades, Rindone was forced to take a temporary leave of absence, falling victim to the automaker’s decision to suspend production at its last Turin plant.

Rindone’s sons — ages 15 and 8 — are unlikely to follow him into Fiat’s workforce, he said.

“If you don’t have a job, how can you have a job for your child?” The 48-year-old is relying on help from his retired parents to pay his mortgage and bills that worry him. “When you see a factory with nearly 100 years of history stop operating, your heart breaks. If Stellantis goes, Turin will die. It’s as simple as that.”

Rindone’s lament resonates across Europe, as the continent’s auto industry – and its 14 million jobs – faces an existential crisis, squeezed between the costs of developing cleaner vehicles to meet strict EU emissions standards and cheaper models from Chinese rivals.

Stellantis, owner of Fiat, which also produces the Peugeot, Citroën and Jeep brands, last month profit warningwhile Volkswagen, Europe’s largest automaker, is considering closing factories in Germany for the first time in history.

Once the pride of Italian manufacturing and known as “Mamma Fiat” for its extensive end-to-end benefits programs, Fiat was merged into Stellantis in 2021, after years of trouble towel.

Last month, the company halted car production at Fiat’s historic Mirafiori plant due to lack of consumer demand for the Fiat 500e – the electric version of the iconic car that democratized ownership Italy’s auto ownership in the 1960s and 1970s. Originally scheduled to last four weeks, the factory closure was extended until at least the end of October.

The crisis has far-reaching political consequences for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is trying to boost economic growth and stabilize Italy’s fragile public finances and for the EU as a whole.

The Italian auto industry, which includes a vast network of parts suppliers, employs around 250,000 people and accounts for more than 5% of gross domestic product. But since 2018, Italy’s total car production has halved to 500,000 vehicles.

On Friday, the country’s auto workers went to Rome to ask Brussels, which has banned the sale of new combustion engine cars after 2035, to provide more financial support for the green transition. Protesters also want the Meloni government to work with Stellantis, the country’s only major automaker, to address industry challenges to preserve jobs.

But Rome and Stellantis disagree on how to do this. Meloni has objected to the production of Fiat models outside Italy, exacerbating tensions.

Italian industry minister Adolfo Urso has urged the EU to reconsider impending restrictions on the sale of internal combustion engines but Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares disagree on whether this is the right approach.

“Instead of arguing about regulations, it is better to strive for compliance in the most effective way,” he told Italian lawmakers at a parliamentary hearing last week.

Tavares also complained about Italy’s high energy prices and Rome’s meager spending on incentives to help the middle class buy electric vehicles – which he said were only a fifth of what other European countries paid. spent.

However, he insisted Stellantis is committed to producing cars in Italy and called Fiat’s factories “strong assets” of the company.

“We love our crops and believe they are the right answer to the challenges we face in the future,” he said. “That’s why we don’t sell them to the Chinese.”

Such flirtations are meaningless to auto workers in Turin, where Fiat was founded in 1899 and has prospered during Italy’s postwar auto boom. “Turin was built for Fiat, but today we don’t have Fiat. Stellantis is a multinational company and we know [they] go where it’s cheapest,” Rindone said

Fiat’s Turin workforce has been steadily shrinking since the late 1990s, with four other plants closing in recent decades. While Stellantis denies plans to close Mirafiori, many workers suspect the company wants to quietly close the factory by waiting for its workforce – whose average age is now 57 – to retire.

Many workers accepted generous buyout offers.

“We were the last generation to be recruited,” said Fabbio Mosesso, 53, who joined Fiat nearly 36 years ago. “Businesses don’t spend money to encourage electric vehicle purchases but to motivate people to leave their jobs.”

Auto worker and union representative Giacomo Zulianello, 58, accused Stellantis of “bleeding us”, adding that “the complete killing of Mirafiori was too much even for Tavares. But in reality, Mirafiori is closed.”

Michaela San Filippo, 51, a second-generation Fiat assembly line worker who is also on leave, said she and her colleagues are facing financial difficulties, even ignoring medical expenses. “You have to give up everything that is not necessary,” she said. “You are not alive; you just have to survive.”

Stellantis has brought new businesses into Mirafiori, including an EV battery testing center, an auto parts recovery and recycling unit, and a new assembly line to power the Fiat 500 hybrid vehicle, expected ​production begins in 2026.

Part of the factory is also a place to display vintage Fiat cars. However, marking Fiat’s 125th anniversary this summer, Urso expressed sadness at the factory’s dwindling output.

“Fiat is Turin,” said the minister, a member of Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party. “It is the largest industrial plant in Europe and we cannot accept that it is becoming simply an industrial museum.”

Not everyone is pessimistic. Stefano Lo Russo, mayor of Turin, said the city is going through a transition not unlike the period when cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.

“When we switched from horses to cars, we stopped providing the horse supply chain in the city and started having mechanics,” Lo Russo said. “That is progress. New technology means change.”

He said Turin’s auto manufacturing history and its technical colleges were supporting a vibrant new aerospace industry, underpinned by the operations of France’s Thales and its Italian defense enemy Leonardo.

“The city’s real profession is not just cars – Turin is a city of engineering and manufacturing,” says Lo Russo. “We can work on cars, satellites, airplanes. More than a city of cars, it is a city of engineers.”

David Avino, a former Italian military officer and software engineer, chose Turin to launch his Argotech space project in 2008, providing space services and astronaut training as well as manufacturing small satellites. Employing about 170 people in the city, Argotech is actively hiring, although Avino said the space sector needs at least another decade to grow to scale.

“If people continue to invest. . . It will be in effect for another 10 or 15 years. But it’s important to get started,” he said.

Andrea Giordano, 36, joined Argotech after his previous employer, a leading auto components company, laid off its Turin workforce earlier this year.

“My hope is that like the auto boom of the 1970s, this city will have an aerospace boom,” said Giordano, a warehouse operator. “In the meantime, it will be difficult. We will have to tighten our belts.”

Additional reporting by Kana Inagaki in London