The foreign giants close their factories, but often leave their offices and marketing sector open. Workers, engineers, physicists jump. The most recent case: Alcatel in Vimercate
by GABRIELE CEREDA and LUCA DE VITO
They dismantle factories, close production sites. Then, perhaps, they leave the commercial offices and marketing sector open. But for large multinationals, the province of Milan is no longer an area in which to invest. The gateway, the large entry gate into Italy that until recently Milan represented for multinationals, is closing. It is no longer just a matter of labor costs, the experts explain, but rather the lack of an institutional strategy that encourages international giants to invest. And then there is the very strong competition from countries such as China and India with ever more attractive markets and where it is increasingly simple to innovate.
Telecommunications, mechanics, pharmaceuticals are the sectors most at risk, with a growing frequency of plant closures. And it is the approximately 6,000 employees who, according to CGIL Milano, have paid for the disengagement of the corporations from 2008 to today with their jobs. The unions appealed desperately: "Either opportunities are recreated in fields such as infrastructure, subsidies, training or the multinationals will all go away". For some time in quicksand, 72 hours ago the hit-tech district of Vimercate received a fatal blow. Alcatel, the French-American telecommunications giant, has announced 690 redundancies in its Italian offices. The most affected by the provision is the town of Brianza. Out of 1,250 employees, 400 are on the brink of the abyss: they are all part of the company's "region", engineers and physicists among the most specialized in Europe.
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«Ours is the country most affected by the disengagement plan - explains Gigi Redaelli of Fim Cisl - In telecommunications we pay for the delays in the development of ultra-broadband. Money stuck, but necessary for the sector ». In Concorezzo, just a couple of kilometers north of Vimercate, 200 of Linkra's 400 employees are hanging by a thread. The redundancy fund expires in March and the American company, which produces radio links, has already made it known that it wants to reduce its commitment in Italy. From one part of the hinterland to the other, the substance does not change: in Cassina de' Pecchi, in the heart of Martesana, at the end of 2011 Jabil (formerly Nokia) left its 325 employees at home. Fired by fax from the American multinational manufacturer of electrical circuits, the workers have also restarted production "waiting for an entrepreneur to take over the plant, machinery and personnel," the union representatives said.
