Italian union: Don't send Fiat jobs to North America

[Bozita]

Source: Detroit Free Press

Italian union: Don't send Fiat jobs to North America
8:50 PM, Oct. 9, 2011
BY BRENT SNAVELY AND GREG GARDNER
DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITERS

The UAW and Chrysler are pushing toward a new labor agreement as tensions rise between Fiat, which owns Chrysler, and an Italian union that fears Fiat could shift production from Europe to North America.

Local UAW officials from Chrysler plants will meet Monday in Warren for an update on high-level talks with Chrysler that went through the weekend.

Fiom, Italy’s largest metalworkers union, is planning a one-day strike Oct. 21 at all Fiat factories to protest what it sees as Fiat’s gradual reduction of production in Italy.

“We are striking to make Fiat stay in Italy,” Maurizio Landini, the head of Fiom told Fiat’s union delegates in Rome on Saturday, according to Reuters.



Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20111009/BUSINESS01/111009025/Italian-union-Don-t-send-Fiat-jobs-North-America?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

[Lucky Luciano]

1. Outsourcing to America...

[baldguy]

2. If Fiat wants to sell that cute little Cinquecento here, it should be built here.

[LoveIsNow]

3. That's a little overly nationalistic.

It's their car. They should build it. That's like saying Scotch whiskey should be made in Indianapolis. It wouldn't be the same. It's just as wrong for Fiat to screw the workers who helped get their company where it is today as it is for Ford to component by component sneak it's production into Latin America under the noses of their American employees.

[JoeyT]

11. Not really

It's actually one of the few ways trade can become fair. Want to sell it here? Make it here.
If Ford, Chevrolet, GM, etc want to sell cars in Italy, they should have to make them there.
Of course that would mean dragging most of their production back out of Mexico and China, but that's too bad.

As an added bonus it's better for the environment, since not only would the companies not have factories in whatever country let them pollute the most, but they also wouldn't be shipping them thousands of miles.

[Anto Giampietro]

10. We don't care that much.

Drive something else.

[SoapBox]

4. Well ain't this a hit in the head!

...wow...

Someone else worried that WE will actually get some jobs here?

...wow...

[EC]

5. They aren't shipping them here...

They are shipping the Kenosha jobs to Mexico.

[MatthewStLouis]

6. Are they considering outsourcing to a "right to work" state?

[PurityOfEssence]

7. So it's official: we're now a less-than-first-world state

Yet another milestone.

[Demonaut]

8. North America includes Canada and Mexico

so where exactly?

[provis99]

9. the American auto workers only make $14 an hour.

American labor is cheaper. We are the new China, wiping out good jobs in other countries so we can create crappy jobs here.

[rayofreason]

13. Hmmm.....

$14/hr=$56624/yr, plus benefits.

I know lots of people who would like a job that pays that well, since it puts you in the fourth quintile for family income. If two earners in a family have that income the family is in the top quintile.

[boppers]

14. Please show your work.

14 an hour, times 40 hours a week, times 52 weeks in a year:
14 x 40 x 52 = $29,120

How did you get $56K?

[rayofreason]

15. Sorry..

You are correct. I must of pushed a wrong button on the calculator and got a wrong number. Stupid me for not double checking. I was doing something later and remembered the 56K number and realized that it was not correct, but when I tried to edit the post it would not let me, saying the time had expired. I am not sure how to delete a post, but I figured some one would say "Hmmm.....those numbers don't add up!" because they don't. Folks on the DU are pretty good about checking #s.

Big difference between 29K and 56K. 29K is well below the median household income. You would need 2 people employed at that rate to have a comfortable middle-class standard of living.

[mojowork_n]

12. Assembled by robots / automated production

The plant is in Mexico, but the workers (by design) are as few and as far between as possible:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFen44Qw5Aw