Leonardo, what happens in Cameri, Grottaglie and Turin
Here are all the latest technological, industrial and trade union innovations in the Leonardo group between Cameri, Grottaglie and Turin
Taken on September 18, in the Leonardo aeronautical plant in Grottaglie (Taranto), the second Friday of production stop for September. If for the former Finmeccanica plant in Cameri (province of Novara) there is a positive result with the recent industrial agreement made with the Americans for the production of F-35s, an unprecedented reduction in work volumes continues for the Apulian site ". While in Turin Leonardo accelerates on technologies for the autonomous flight of drones and unmanned aircraft and does so also thanks to a challenge organized with the teams of six Italian universities.
Here are all the latest technological, industrial and trade union news on the former Finmeccanica group.
THE PENTAGON CONTRACT
Last week, the US Defense Department awarded Lockheed Martin a $ 9 million contract , 85% of which invested in the Leonardo plant in Cameri, which will enhance the support activities of the F-35, in particular repair activities. , revision and regional updating of aircraft destined for the Italian government.
The funding, as La Stampa wrote, “should also lead to an increase in employment at the Cameri site, managed by Leonardo and used to assemble F-35s for Italy and the Netherlands. An industrial chain was created in Cameri for the implementation of the F-35 program, which in 2019 produced 63 million euros in exports for Italian companies, an increase compared to 20 in 2018 ".
THE ROLE OF THE FACO DI CAMERI
The facility managed by Leonardo in Cameri is the only assembly and final checkout site for F-35s in Europe.
As Aurelio Giansiracusa pointed out in AresDifesa , "the Cameri plant is able to perform technologically advanced industrial processes, representing the main engineering-maintenance and logistic center of the Italian Air Force for high-performance aircraft (fast jets)".
WHAT THE FISMIC CONFSAL OF CAMERI THINKS
“The forecasts are for growth in industrial activities and employment. Today the Cameri plant employs about a thousand workers, becoming for the Leonardo group a point of industrial excellence and certainty of workloads for the coming decades ”commented Giovanni Contento national secretary of Fismic Confsal.
Positive judgment therefore on the renewed investment by the United States in the Cameri plant by Fismic Confsal, a new majority union in the Novara plant managed by the Leonardo group (formerly Finmeccanica), where the F-35s are assembled.
THE MAJORITY UNION IN CAMERI
In fact, last July 17 elections were held for the RSU (unitary union representation) in the Cameri plant, inaugurated in 2013. As Michelangelo Colombo wrote in Start , “the outcome led to significant changes among the unions. The Fismic Confsal, which presented itself in the elections for the first time, overcame the competition of the other unions with the election of 6 Rsu and 2 Rls (Representative of workers for safety). After the Fismic came the Fim-Cisl with 3 Rsu and 1 Rls, the Uilm 2 Rsu and the Fiom-Cgil 1 Rsu ”.
The first elections in the plant managed by Leonardo took place in 2017. The employees were less than 300 and had elected 3 delegates representing the Fim-Cisl (2) and Uilm (1).
THE SITUATION OF GROTTAGLIE
"While today we speak positively of an excellent industrial agreement made with the Americans for the production of the F-35s, we record a serious negativity that in the last two years has been consolidated in the worsening of relations between Leonardo's management team and American Boeing in the management of the 787 program, with negative repercussions on workloads in the Grottaglie, Foggia, Pomigliano and Nola plants ”reported Contento.
The plant in the province of Taranto employs over a thousand workers for the construction of the two sections of the carbon fiber fuselage of the Boeing 787.
GROTTAGLIE PENALIZED BY BOEING
As we said, in Grottaglie, Leonardo has already reduced monthly production since August, through a collective closure and holidays plan, and will continue like this also in the coming months since the Covid crisis has had heavy repercussions both on the world aviation market and on the American company Boeing , who is the builder of the 787 aircraft.
The Boeing effect therefore weighs on Grottaglie, struggling with the air transport crisis also due to the Coronavirus. The American company, in fact, has announced a reduction from 2021 in the production of large airliners, namely 787 and 737 .
According to what was declared by Maurizio Rosini, Leonardo's Aerostructures Operations Director, the Covid impact "we will carry it through 2020, 2021 and part of 2022". Leonardo foresees "a restart in the fourth quarter of 2022 to return to the pre-crisis in 2023".
THE 2021 PLAN IS NOT DEFINED FOR THE GROTTAGLIE SITE
Currently the Grottaglie site, where 1,300 direct employees work – with a very young average age – is holding a production step of ten fuselage pairs (the central and the central rear) per month. In 2019, 14 pairs were also produced. For 2021, the plan – according to union sources – is not yet defined. The production of ten monthly pairs should remain for almost half a year and then drop to 6 per month.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN OCTOBER
"Nothing has been made official yet for October," said Uilm's Agi Davide Sperti last week. There was a similar stop indication along with another collective closure before the end of the year. We await developments, but above all we are waiting to know what new production lines Leonardo would be thinking of to support the site's activity which, working on only two sections of the carbon fiber fuselage of the Boeing 787, is in fact a single contract ".
THE VISIT OF THE SECOND MINISTER BUFFAGNI
The decline in production expected by the company also for 2021 is worrying workers and trade unions. But "The government is there, the company is aware of the attention we have on this territory, which is a territory of excellence", declared in recent days the Deputy Minister for Economic Development Stefano Buffagni (M5S), on the occasion of his two days in Puglia last week, where he also visited the Leonardo plant in Grottaglie.
“On this site there are more than 1500 workers, 1500 families, 1500 people who do extraordinary work for our country which must be defended. In the budget law it is necessary to help them ”.
THE ROLE OF CDP VENTURE CAPITAL
As Michelangelo Colombo pointed out on Start, "the indirect reference of the words of the pentastellato exponent in the Conte government is to the potential role in this case as well of Cdp Venture Capital is an Sgr (70% of CDP Equity and 30% of Invitalia) which has about 1 billion euros of resources under management. The Sgr aims to make Venture Capital a cornerstone of the country's economic development and innovation, with attention also to the South, creating the conditions for an overall and sustainable growth of the Venture Capital ecosystem. It operates with a series of funds that aim to support startups in all their life stages, making both direct and indirect investments ".
THE POSITION OF THE MSW OF GROTTAGLIE
Despite the reassurances of the deputy minister Buffagni after the meeting with the Leonardo management, the agitation among the workers in the Grottaglie plant remains.
As reported by the Corriere di Taranto on September 15, the Rsu of Fim, Fiom and Uilm believe that it is “imperative that the company, at all levels, formalize the production and organizational plan planned for 2021 and the consequent management to the RSU. Given the confused planning of the period of production decline in August / September, it is necessary to discuss the management and coverage of the work discharges scheduled until the end of the year ”.
The RSU believes that it is “essential that the unloading of labor is shared equally among workers. Aiming to ensure everyone the same days of presence and work on the site, agreeing on the methods so that they are not unilateral on the part of the company ".
WHAT LEONARDO DOES IN TURIN
Meanwhile, the industrial game of Leonardo on the front of unmanned aircraft and in particular of autonomous flight is played in a transversal way, from the aircraft division to the electronic one, first of all touching Turin. It starts with sensors and artificial intelligence aboard drones and then scales onto medium-sized aircraft, Il Sole 24 Ore wrote over the weekend: "The group led by Alessandro Profumo created a unit led by Laurent Sissmann two years ago. the task of accelerating the development of technologies for autonomous flight systems ".
Today Leonardo has a family of drones in his portfolio alongside the Awhero, Crex-B platforms and the Falco family, remotely piloted aircraft used in Isr, Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. "Leonardo's industrial game on the front of unmanned aircraft and in particular of autonomous flight is played across the board, from the aircraft division to the electronic one – wrote Il Sole 24 Ore – With an eye, however, to a model of Open Innovation that has pushed the Group to open up to the university world – the universities involved are the Polytechnics of Turin and Milan, Naples, Tor Vergata, Sant'Anna di Pisa and Bologna – building a network of competing talents with the aim of promoting development of AI technologies applied to unmanned systems ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/leonardo-cameri-grottaglie-torino/ on Mon, 21 Sep 2020 07:00:35 +0000.