MILAN – Four auto groups considering a pay request from Italian unions believe the proposal is too high, the UILM union said on Wednesday as talks got underway.
Earlier this month, unions presented their proposal to renew four-year contracts expiring at the end of this year for most Italian workers at carmakers Stellantis and Ferrari , truckmaker Iveco and agriculture and construction machine maker CNH Industrial.
The proposal from the FIM-CISL, UILM, Fismic, UGLM and AQCF unions included a 8.4% pay rise for next year to help workers counter a Europe-wide spike in consumer price inflation.
As official talks started on Wednesday in Turin, the four companies stressed the need to contain costs, which are rising for energy, financial resources and for raw materials, Rocco Palombella and Gianluca Ficco of UILM said in a statement.
Stellantis’ head of human resources in Italy Giuseppe Manca, however, said in a statement that unions had a “constructive” approach and the company did not think it was the time to interrupt a bargaining path the four groups, all descending from former Fiat, had started with unions almost 12 years ago.
“With the national and international context we are experiencing, full of difficulties and challenges, we have one more reason to find solutions together that can adequately protect the interests of workers and the company,” Manca said.
He added Stellantis considered the new contract it is discussing with unions a “valuable tool” to achieve its competitiveness ambitions in Italy.
Talks for new contracts at the four manufactures cover almost 70,000 workers in Italy, two thirds of them at the former Fiat-Chrysler, which last year merged with France’s PSA to create Stellantis, whose brands also include Peugeot, Jeep and Opel.
Stellantis leads the talks with unions for the four groups, which all have the Agnelli family’s holding company Exor as a major shareholder.
Unions and the companies have scheduled seven more meetings to be held between mid-November and mid-December.
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