Union Fears Massive Job-Cuts At Olivetti

Giorgio Cremaschi, Fiom secretary in the northwestern Piemonte region where Olivetti is based, told reporters, Olivetti is in the throes of a dramatic crisis.

There is talk at the highest levels in the company of thousands of sackings. We heard rumours on Saturday of 5,000 redundancies, he said, shortly before meeting industry minister Pierluigi Bersani.

We're not asking for state handouts, we're asking the government to intervene in a dramatic situation, he said.

Shares in Olivetti, which has not turned a profit since 1990, plunged when they resumed trading on Monday after a two-day suspension.

Meanwhile, the Italian government said that it will stick to its policy of liberalising and privatising the telecoms sector despite the difficulties of struggling information technology group Olivetti, industry minister Carlo Bersani said on Monday.

 

The Olivetti affair can not alter the basic tenets of our national industrial policy, he told reporters while attending a conference in Turin. In the telecoms sector we are moving to a process of liberalisation, regulation and privatisation.

Industrial observers said the minister's remarks, the first from a member of the centre-left government, appeared to rule out any possibility of the state coming to the rescue of the troubled Ivrea-based company, as suggested over the weekend by some politicians.

In this process our interest is that companies which are currently leaders in the field of computer services and telecommunications should stand firmly on their own feet and that they should participate in the phase of competition and collaboration which is opening up, Bersani said. This is a phase in which we hope international partners will also be present and compete in an appropriate way, the minister added.