Fiat will move production of Panda model to Italy

Italian car maker Fiat said on July 09 it would move production of one of its best-selling models from Poland to Italy after months of incertitude over the future of a plant currently employing 5,200 people. Fiat and the unions "agreed on the need for the plant ... to maintain continuous production, thus offering a future to the workers of the Pomigliano plant," the company said in a statement.
Until now, Fiat had not revealed whether it would shut down or invest heavily in the Pomigliano d'Arco plant after a third of the workforce in June voted against conditions tied to a critical investment plan.
Under the plan that was voted on, Fiat will move production of its Panda model from Poland - where labour costs are low - to Pomigliano, in the impoverished region around the southern town of Naples, on condition that workers accept longer hours and shorter breaks.
"The plan aims to fill the competitiveness gap that separates us from other countries and to bring Fiat to a level of efficiency that can guarantee that Italy retains a great auto industry," Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne said in a rare open letter to employees. The Panda, an inexpensive hatchback, is currently produced in the southern Polish plant of Tychy, near the border with the Czech Republic.
The company, which acquired a 20-percent stake in Chrysler last year with the aim of taking it over, is prepared to invest 700 million euros (850 million dollars) to rejuvenate Pomigliano.
Fiat wants to arrange shifts to enable the plant to operate 24 hours a day, six days a week in order for it to build 270,000 cars a year compared with just 35,000 vehicles in 2009 - a year marked by several periods of temporary layoffs owing to the global economic downturn. Marchionne had said the plant could have been shut down in 2011, had the plan not been put in place.
On June 15, the plan was approved by all of the unions except FIOM-CGIL, which maintained that the scheme infringes on workers' rights, giving Fiat the power to sanction and eventually fire workers over "abnormal" absences from the workplace. Fiat is Italy's biggest private employer with a national workforce of some 80,000 people.