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Fiat workers fear the future
SICILY, Italy -- Fiat workers in one of the poorest corners of Italy are angry and bitter after talks on how to revive the automaker broke down, leaving thousands of jobs at risk. Thousands of workers blocked roads and demonstrated outside factories across Italy on Friday -- the first in what is expected to be a series of nationwide protests against the once-great automaker's plans to slash its workforce and cut its debt. The strike began after negotiations to revive the trouble company collapsed, clearing the way for Fiat, once the biggest carmaker in Europe, to launch its first wave of 5,600 layoffs on Monday. The Fiat plant at Termini Imerese, a rundown industrial town, will feel the effects immediately, with its 1,800 workers due to be sent home on temporary lay-offs with minimal pay on Monday. "I feel like 30 years of my life just went down the drain," Salvatore Lo Duca, 50, a Termini employee who joined Fiat in 1970, told Reuters. "All of us here have poured our lives into this company, and yet there feels like there's nothing in return." Fiat pledged not to shut the Termini plant because the government is worried about the impact the plant closure would have on the economy. Instead, it said it would reduce production at the plant to a trickle until next September when it will take back the bulk of the workers laid off and restart full production. But workers in Termini Imerese fear the jobs will be lost permanently. "I'm 55, I've done this all my life, what else am I going to do," asked employee Michele Manzo. "Here, unemployment is already 25 percent. Fiat is all there was, there aren't any other jobs." Manzo, married with two children, takes home about €1,100 euros ($1,100) a month as the sole bread-winner in the family, with mortgage payments of €400 euros a month.
Under the temporary lay-off scheme, which provides a percentage of normal wages, he said he would take home about €750 a month. Manzo asked the bank if he could freeze payments on the house for a while, but was refused. Maurizio Cavarretta, 40, married with four children said: "There isn't Christmas at all this year. "I'm worried about how I'm going to buy books for my girls to go to school." Fiat is trying to cut $1 billion of costs next year and could lose $2 billion this year. It is losing market share at home, selling 28 percent of the cars bought in Italy -- half what it did a decade ago. General Motors owns 20 percent of the ailing auto maker, and Fiat has an option to sell the remaining 80 percent of its operations to it in 2004. And it is highly unlikely that the U.S. giant would want to keep pumping cash into a plant like Termini, located in the rocky northern shore of Sicily. "When Fiat came 32 years ago, everyone thought the future was great," said Manzo. "When they go, there'll be nothing." Reuters contributed to this report.
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