The relationship between the shipyard and the city is a raw nerve due to non-EU migrants: out of 30,000 inhabitants, one in three residents is foreign, with 5,000 Bangladeshi citizens of Islamic religion. Out of 7,000 workers, 5,000 are subcontracted, almost all foreigners. The company: we respect the law and besides, Italians don’t want to do certain jobs.
Monfalcone (Trieste) – The role of industry, the responsibility of the company, the quality of work, the social bomb that can be triggered in the territory by a gigantic production site in the absence of political governance. In Monfalcone, a textbook case is playing out: the difficult coexistence with the giant Fincantieri culminated in recent days in a bipartisan motion from the City Council, which for the first time asks the factory with a unified voice to change its production model and accuses the company of illegal behavior regarding subcontracting contracts. The reaction from CEO Pierroberto Folgiero was firm; with a long letter published in the newspaper Il Piccolo, he reaffirmed the leading role and transparency of the company in all its labor relations.
The relationship between the shipyard and the city has become an extremely raw nerve over the last thirty years, due to the attraction of first Southern Italian and then non-EU workers to a community that today has 30,000 inhabitants and where one in three residents is foreign, with 5,000 Bangladeshi citizens of Islamic religion. Add to this the painful history of deaths from asbestos, past cases of illegal labor brokering that have emerged, the decision of the then center-left led City Council to withdraw as a civil party in the asbestosis trials, and the League’s ability to wave the flag of the migration issue, leading to the center-right’s victory in 2016 in the red city of shipyards with over 70% of the vote.
But if until now it has been the League mayor and now MEP, Anna Cisint, who has most strongly attacked the management of first Giuseppe Bono, and then Pierroberto Folgiero, without Fincantieri’s top management deeming the accusations worthy of a response, now the city councilors are speaking with a single voice and this radically shifts the axis of the problem. After a marathon session, the City Council unanimously votes on a text that rejects Fincantieri’s intention to increase the size of the ships under construction (from 175,000 to 226,000 tons) and asks the company for “a transparent and structured discussion to review the production system” and to guarantee “the protection of legality and workers’ rights.”
During the assembly, the League MEP also showed a video in which a foreign worker denounces being subjected to illegal labor brokering, forced by his own company to return a part of the salary received. Cisint announced that she had requested and obtained a hearing on this matter before the Anti-Mafia Commission to shed light on the management of subcontracting, which involves over 5,000 of the 7,000 workers who pass through the gates every day to contribute to the construction of the white cruise ships.
But in the center-right, not everyone thinks like Cisint. And the Governor of Fvg, Massimiliano Fedriga, immediately rushed to bolster Fincantieri’s position, explaining that it is “wrong to bring Fincantieri, an international player and Italian champion, into the political arena.”
In all parties, an embarrassing double oven opens: the Monfalcone representatives attacking the company, the big shots ensuring support, emphasizing the importance of the plant, calling for responsibility.
Folgiero, however, had already thought about defending himself on his own, from the pages of the local newspaper. The CEO rejects encroachments on his turf and accuses, without ever naming it, Cisint of “using the company as a political sounding board” and proposing “simplistic solutions.” Then comes the claim of the bicentennial history of the Monfalcone shipyard, of the role of workers from Italy and abroad, of the creation of a wide supply chain, and above all, of Fincantieri’s ability to leave in Friuli Venezia Giulia something like “3 billion in GDP” every year, that is, 6% of the regional gross domestic product. There is also a passage on immigration and the emphasis that “Italians no longer want to perform the most physically demanding tasks.”
The other sore point is that of the quality of work, and here Folgiero recalls “the shortening of subcontracting chains,” “maximum stabilization,” and “the legality protocol” signed with the Ministry of the Interior. Less convincing is the closing remark dedicated to the kindergarten built with Fincantieri’s contribution: a company of this size could definitely do more.
The last to intervene in chronological order is Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, once again in Il Piccolo, where the minister seeks a difficult mediation with the company and between the two souls of the regional League. Salvini asks for “realism and common sense,” acknowledges Fincantieri as “a world-class excellence,” but also underlines that “its growth has repercussions on the territory, whose requests cannot be ignored.” Salvini sends the message: “Fincantieri can and must grow, but the citizens of Monfalcone have the right to ask that it does so in collaboration with them,” also “by giving priority to Italian companies and workers or, if foreign, those coming from countries with a culture closer to ours.” A meeting with the company’s top management and the mayor of Monfalcone will soon be convened at the Region’s headquarters: a new episode in a story that promises to be long and difficult.
