What do Gkn’s layoffs in Tuscany hide?
The Gkn case in Campi Bisenzio could be the signal of a wider crisis in the sector in Tuscany linked to components as well as a possible case of delocalization to Germany. After Bekaert, there are fears for the Vitesco factories.
GKN Driveline, a company of components for the automotive industry owned by the British fund Melrose, announced in recent days the closure of its plant in Campi Bisenzio (Florence) and the dismissal – communicated via email – of all 442 employees.
As reconstructed by AGI , the company said the choice was due to the crisis in the automotive sector: a "generalized downward trend" that was amplified by the pandemic and the transition to electric mobility. The organizational structure therefore appears “no longer sustainable”, the Campi Bisenzio site will be closed and the redundancies will be structural; the conditions for resorting to social safety nets would not exist, argues GKN.
WHAT GKN PRODUCES
La Nazione , the main Florentine newspaper, writes that GKN Driveline manufactures drive shafts and transmission elements for the automotive sector.
About 80 percent of the components produced at the Campi Bisenzio plant were supplied to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) , and the remaining 20 percent to BMW, Audi, Ferrari, Maserati and Land Rover.
“In the past”, we read in La Nazione , “the percentage was 50 and 50, but then the productions of the German brands were partially carried over” to the GKN plants in Germany.
THE ACCOUNTS OF GKN
In 2019 GKN Driveline Firenze had a turnover of 136.9 million euros, with a decrease of 9.5 percent compared to the previous year. The expected turnover for 2025 is 71 million, almost half of that of the period before the pandemic, wrote Il Sole 24 Ore.
RELOCATION AS BEKAERT?
The FIM-CISL states that GKN intends to relocate the production of Campi Bisenzio elsewhere, but it is not clear where. However, the union thinks that the closure of the Florentine site does not have “any logic, given that not a short time ago important investments were made in machinery and automation”.
The GKN case is compared to that of Bekaert, a Belgian company that produces steel coatings for tires and which in 2018 transferred the production of Figline Valdarno (near Florence) to Eastern Europe, firing 318 workers.
THE INTERVENTION OF THE GOVERNMENT
The government seems to want to intervene on the dismissals of Campi Bisenzio: the Ministry of Economic Development has called a meeting for next Thursday to discuss the issue. The Ministry of Labor, the Tuscany Region, the Mayor of Florence, the trade unions and representatives of GKN Florence, GKN Automotive and Melrose will also participate.
But – Il Sole 24 Ore writes today – the GKN case “ could mark the start of an automotive crisis which, even in Tuscany where the sector has a hundred companies and about 10 thousand employees, risks having very heavy effects”.
WILL VITESCO BE NEXT?
The eyes are then focused on Vitesco, a German company that produces injectors for thermal engines in San Piero a Grado and Fauglia, fractions of Pisa: 950 workers in all.
“The multinational property”, the newspaper recalls, “has long announced 750 redundancies in the Pisan plants starting from 2024 (and by 2029) which are linked to the decision to leave the 'combustion' sector. The company has alternative projects in mind to convert to components for different sectors such as hydrogen, but the dialogue with the Tuscany Region and the Ministry of Economic Development has not produced results so far ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/gkn-campi-bisanzio-licenziamenti-crisi-toscana/ on Tue, 13 Jul 2021 14:00:09 +0000.