Fiat agrees to return of 19 Pomigliano workers - union

Rome, June 11 - Fiat has agreed to the return of 19 FIOM union members to its Pomigliano d'Arco factory, the trade union's Secretary-General Maurizio Landini said Wednesday. The group of workers was at the centre of a lengthy battle between Fiat and FIOM, the metalworkers' arm of CGIL, Italy's biggest trade-union confederation. The group will return to work over the coming weeks, said the union. "As far as we are concerned, we want to open a new chapter of industrial relations in all of the Fiat Group," said Landini. He added that various unions representing Fiat workers

should become more unified. Last July, Italy's Constitutional Court ruled in favor of FIOM in its petition against being excluded from Fiat's company union representation body (RSA) for not having signed labour agreements. The Constitutional Court said that it considered illegitimate a part of Italy's labour law that said unions which did not sign collective agreements applied at a company's plants could be excluded from RSAs. FIOM has been engaged in a series of bitter fights with Fiat in recent years. The carmaker did not take on any of its former FIOM workers when it set up a special subsidiary to run the Pomigliano plant in 2010 after a dispute with the union over the flexible labour practices it wanted to implement there. In February 2013 Fiat told 18 of the workers to stay at home, saying they would still receive their salaries - the other member of the 19 was on leave of absence anyway for political activities.