Italy: new Fiat-Chrysler joint venture will remain outside the Italian industrial relations system

After Fiat left the negotiating table on the future of Mirafiori (see our dispatch No.  100861), Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s managing director, agreed, on Friday, December 10th, in New York, with the leader of the Confindustria employers’ organization, Emma Marcegaglia, on the fact that the new company (Fiat-Chrysler joint venture) which will take over the establishment won’t be a member of the employers’ organization and won’t apply the metal collective agreement. However, it will be able to join Confindustria after establishing a collective agreement for the automotive industrial, cut out to its requirements.  However, before investing (1 billion), Marchionne wants unions’ full consent for the company agreement, otherwise he will turn to his “backup plan” – transferring production abroad. Talks could resume just before Christmas, when Marchionne comes back from the US, and end in a separate agreement.  In the meantime, Federmeccanica, the metal employers’ organization, called the Fim and Uilm, which signed the 2009 CCN, in Rome next Monday to discuss the introduction of an auto collective agreement.