After the fire

Former Ilva, blast furnace 1 stoppage immediately raises the redundancy fund: for now already 1,000 more workers

The numbers: there were currently 3,062 social shock absorbers, of which 2,680 in Taranto. The latter now rises to 3,538 workers and there are also workers in Genoa, Novi Ligure and Racconigi

by Domenico Palmiotti

13 May 2025

Lo stabilimento Ilva visto dai tetti del quartiere Tamburi. ANSA / CIRO FUSCO

5' min read

Key points

No further extension of cigs excluded
The additional 100 mln bridging loan is on its way
Unions' reactions
Confindustria Taranto: no more dialogue, situation deflagrates

5' min read

The extraordinary redundancy fund in the Acciaierie d'Italia group, formerly Ilva, has immediately risen by about a thousand units due to last Wednesday's fire in blast furnace 1 of the Taranto steelworks, the seizure of the plant without the right to use it ordered by the Taranto Public Prosecutor's Office and, above all, according to the company, the delay with which the same Public Prosecutor's Office gave AdI the go-ahead for the work to make the blast furnace safe and safeguard it. Delay reported by AdI to the Prosecutor's Office and also underlined by the Minister of Enterprise, Adolfo Urso.

Meeting with metalworkers' unions on the morning of 13 May, Acciaierie d'Italia - represented by General Manager Maurizio Saitta and Human Resources Director Claudio Picucci - said that as of tomorrow, 14 May, 4,046 workers in the group will be laid off. In particular, the site of Taranto will have 3,538 cassintegrati divided among the various areas, that of Genoa 178, Novi Ligure 163 and Racconigi 45. Currently, the agreement of 4 March at the Ministry of Labour between AdI and trade unions has provided for a maximum of 3,062 cassintegrati in rotation in the group on just under 10 thousand employees, of which 2,680 in Taranto on just under 8 thousand employees. In reality, before Wednesday's fire, the lay-offs were running at these numbers: 2,100-2,200 in Taranto, 150 in Genoa and 100-110 in Novi Ligure. Now these numbers will be increased immediately, but Acciaierie does not rule out a second, further extension.

No further extension of cigs excluded

It will depend on the outcome of the technical survey that Paul Whurt's consultants are carrying out on the blast furnace - they will have to clarify what happened, what now needs to be done and what the timescales and costs will be - but also on any news that may accrue on the plant. Picucci said, according to union sources, that 'we will proceed to activate a petition to the Ministry of Labour to prefigure an intervention on the redundancy fund that is consistent with the current phase. If nothing changes in a positive sense with respect to the timing of the restart of the blast furnace, we will have to look at a larger extraordinary redundancy fund'. There are no numbers on this last aspect yet, because it will depend on how the situation develops, but the extraordinary redundancy fund could also be progressively extended to 5,500 when fully operational and as a maximum in the group. In fact, the operation of only one blast furnace - only the 4th remains in operation - drastically cuts production, which is already at a minimum, and related upstream and downstream activities.

Additional 100 mln bridging loan coming

Saitta outlined all the difficulties AdI is facing. According to the trade unions, the issue of the Integrated Environmental Authorisation was discussed, which has not yet been renewed and whose current text is contested by the company due to the high number of prescriptions (477), their cost (one billion) and the difficult technical feasibility of many of them. The question of resources also came up, according to the unions. From this point of view, AdI's financial autonomy would be at rock bottom, but sources close to the dossier have clarified that for 'the issue of the 100 million bridging loan, funds are on the way thanks to the active intervention of the institutions. The government has obtained the green light from the European Commission and is completing the administrative process necessary to proceed with the disbursement'. These are the 100 million of the Milleproroghe dl in addition to the 320 million of the Mef bridge loan to AdI, authorised by the EU last July.

The trade unions' reactions

The surge in redundancy payments is drawing criticism from the trade unions. "There are so many issues that need to be addressed, we ask the government to convene us as soon as possible to clarify. Above all, we want to understand what is really the industrial perspective of a restart plan that will no longer be feasible following the fire at blast furnace 1," says Valerio D'Alò of Fim Cisl. And Guglielmo Gambardella of Uilm: 'We are not willing to discuss increasing the extraordinary redundancy fund. The government should take over the management of the group and immediately start the electrification and decarbonisation of production'. For Loris Scarpa of the Fiom CGIL, 'it cannot be that the workers once again pay the consequences of the inability to start the decarbonisation of the plants'. While Usb with Franco Rizzo and Sasha Colautti, 'the current conditions do not allow a fair negotiation with Baku Steel. The picture, which has changed and is definitely worrying, requires courage. The government should nationalise in the interests of the workers and the community'.

Confindustria Taranto: no dialogue, situation deflagrates

Finally, for Confindustria Taranto, whose president Salvatore Toma speaks, 'what we all hoped for has failed: dialogue, listening and trust. The result is a situation that is worsening minute by minute and that risks deflagrating with very serious repercussions for the stability of the factory, the social climate and an entire industrial apparatus. It is certainly not up to us,' Toma points out, 'to contest the actions of the public prosecutor's office and we do not intend to do so. It would probably have sufficed to adopt a more sympathetic line so as not to compromise months and months of painstaking work by the commissioners, the government itself and Minister Urso in particular, to ensure that the plant did not shut down definitively'.

Taranto Prosecutor: no delay in the OK for work

But to Acciaierie, which has declared that the judicial authority's OK for the work has come too late, the Taranto public prosecutor, Eugenia Pontassuglia, responds directly, in a note, and states: "On the basis of the evaluations expressed by Arpa Puglia", the Public Prosecutor's Office authorised "the execution of almost all the activities requested, excluding those which, according to the technical evaluations expressed by Arpa, on the one hand did not affect the integrity of the plants, and on the other hand appeared to be in conflict with the evidentiary requirements connected with the seizure". AdI speaks of further, serious complications at the blast furnace because, according to the company, the requested intervention should have been made within 48 hours of the request to the Magistracy and instead was authorised later. On this point, however, the Public Prosecutor's Office points out that the authorisation measure was filed at 1.01 p.m. on 10 May, 'two hours after the filing of the last request and, therefore, within the 48-hour deadline indicated'. Regarding the "refusal" by the Public Prosecutor's Office "to grant the authorisation to carry out the 'casting of the spindles'", as Acciaierie affirmed, "an operation that is assumed to be necessary to avoid the execution of extraordinary procedures that could lead to the probable definitive shutdown of the plant, it should be specified," the Public Prosecutor argued, "that such a request does not appear to have been made in either of the two mentioned instances. These are the one that AdI presented on 8 May at 4.50 p.m., attached to the seizure report, "where authorisation was requested to carry out specific and numerous technical activities on the seized plant", and the one that AdI presented on 9 May, at 3.14 p.m., where "in addition to the previous one", it "requested the performance of other and specific technical activities to be carried out on the plant". "At present," concluded Prosecutor Pentassuglia, "technical investigations are underway to ascertain the causes of the event and possible elements of responsibility.