In mid-July, while the national unity government led by Mario Draghi was screwing into an increasingly uncontrollable crisis, in the industrial area of San Dorligo della Valle, a village of six thousand inhabitants squeezed between the port of Trieste and the border with Slovenia, the worst industrial crisis of 2022 exploded.
On Thursday 14, during the vote on the so-called aid decree in the chamber of deputies, the Finnish multinational Wärtsilä informed the unions that it would close the Trieste plant and move the production of engines for ships to Finland, firing 451 workers out of a total of 973. The workers immediately mobilized and organized a permanent garrison in front of the factory, to prevent the machinery and engines inside from being disassembled and taken away. In the same hours in Rome the aid decree was approved without the vote of the 5-star Movement, Draghi opened the government crisis and no one worried about what was happening in the distant Adriatic city.
On Saturday 16 July the workers of Wärtsilä demonstrated in Piazza Unità in Trieste. In solidarity with them there was a very varied line-up: the center-right mayor Roberto Di Piazza and archbishop Gianpaolo Crepaldi, the dockers opposed to the green pass and Catholic associations such as the Acli, the confederal and grassroots unions. In Trieste 1,200 jobs are at risk, between the closure of the Finnish multinational, that of the former Principe ham factory scheduled for the end of September and the Flextronics crisis. The latter has 500 employees, produces components in particular for Nokia, has blocked production due to the difficulty of getting the components of the microchips from the Far East due to the blocks due to anti-covid measures and due to the increase in prices. of raw materials, and now would like to relocate to Romania.
The president of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, Massimiliano Fedriga, of the Lega, has summoned the Italian leaders of Wärtsilä to try to make them retrace their steps, but in vain. From many quarters came the request to the Minister of Economic Development (Mise) Giancarlo Giorgetti to nationalize the factory, using the model experimented to save Corneliani, a historic clothing brand from Mantua, as a model. In that case, Mise, through the subsidiary Invitalia, invested 6.5 million euros in the capital of a new company set up to take over the previous one.
“I hope it is a positive sign for other realities too that can see in what is now known as the Corneliani method the possibility of a future for many workers and for companies of excellence that do not have to close or relocate”, commented Giorgetti on the 31st. November 2021, immediately after the conclusion of the rescue agreement. Since then, the so-called Corneliani method has not been used anymore. It was not proposed in any of the 69 crisis tables still open at the Mise, the most important of which – and still unresolved – is the one concerning Gkn, the car components factory owned by a British multinational that in July 2021 closed by firing 422 workers.
The government has always adopted market solutions. And due to the competition between Minister Giorgetti and his deputy Alessandra Todde, of the 5-star Movement, the latter was almost always present at meetings with trade union representatives and company leaders, but with blunt weapons.
Even in the case of Wärtsilä, the nationalization proposal faded within a few days. A visit by the Senate Industry Commission was scheduled for 21 July in Trieste, but “it has been postponed to a date to be defined” due to the political crisis. It was the day the president of the republic dissolved the chambers. At the ministry of economic development, everything is at a standstill: meetings with representatives of companies and trade unions have been entrusted to technicians, waiting for a new government to take office to face an autumn that Draghi himself described as “difficult”.
The last crisis table took place on July 22, the day after the resignation of the government, which remained in office only for “current affairs”. It concerned the former Gkn, which from the end of July should move to a new ownership, the Qf led by the entrepreneur Francesco Borgomeo, with the aim of relaunching the plant by producing machinery for the pharmaceutical industry and saving 390 jobs on 422. At stake was also integration with the project presented by former workers and a collective of scholars, which provides for a conversion of the plant as part of a public plan for sustainable mobility. At the meeting, coordinated by Luca Annibaletti, head of the structure created by the ministry to deal with business crises, there was no representative of the resigning government.
On 27 July the representatives of Wärtsilä confirmed to Minister Giorgetti their intention to close. Now the case will pass to the new government, but in the meantime the company may already have abandoned Trieste. On 23 July, in great secrecy, taking advantage of the inattention of politicians and the media, the multinational has already emptied the plant, as revealed by the newspaper Il Piccolo. The workers in garrison noticed this and managed to prevent engines for 60 million euros from being taken away.
Meanwhile, the multinational could receive 34 million euros from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRP), after having received almost 90 million euros in regional or ministry of economic development contributions. For Fiom-CGIL “this case once again demonstrates the ineffectiveness of Italian legislation in countering the excessive power of multinationals and stopping production relocations”.