Union Pressures Stellantis Over Production Cuts in Italy

Italian auto workers are ramping up pressure on Stellantis to commit more assets to vehicle production in the home of some of its most iconic brands.

The FIM-CISL union claims that the automaker’s output is set to fall from 751,000 last year to just 500,000 in 2024, Reuters reports. Stellantis is already facing mounting criticism from Italy’s government for not supporting the domestic automotive industry enough while building Italian-branded models in countries with cheaper labor costs.

The union’s projection suggests an output level well below the 1-million-vehicle target by 2030 that Stellantis is discussing with the Italian government. That target includes both passenger car and commercial vehicle output from Stellantis’s Italian brands: Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and Iveco.

The automaker says is faces a complicated competitive situation made worse by high energy and labor costs, particularly in Italy. A broad rethinking of the country’s industrial policies is key to achieving proposed results, it adds.

The union claims all six Stellantis factories in Italy saw output declines in the first nine months of the year, with an overall 41% drop to 387,600 vehicles.

In the historic Mirafiori plant in Turin, output declined 68% in the first nine months. Production of the electric Fiat 500e city car, the main model made there, has been repeatedly halted this year and operations are currently suspended until November.

“If the trend seen in the third quarter was to be confirmed in the last quarter of the year, the production would become even more serious," with fewer than 300,000 cars and some 200,000 vans produced, says FIM-CISL’s head Ferdinando Uliano.

Uliano, presenting the union’s quarterly report on the automaker’s output in the country, adds production volumes were hampered by delays in the government’s new-vehicle purchase incentive scheme, which was announced at the beginning of this year but introduced only in June.

“We think that the lack of incentives in other European countries has had a negative impact,” Uliano says.