經(jīng)濟類文章精選：Fiat redux

8 Fiat redux

　　Fiat's agony spreads to workers as 8,100 jobs go

　　THE giant Mirafiori plant in Turin is the heart of Fiat Auto, the troubled car division of the Fiat group. As the early shift trooped home at 2pm on October 9th, the mood was pessimistic. The workers knew that the bosses were meeting union leaders later that afternoon in Rome to announce 8,100 job cuts across the group's car factories. This is on top of 3,000 job losses announced earlier this year. Workers expect one-third of Mirafiori's 12,000 employees to be gone by next July. Fiat says that all but 500 of the total are temporary lay-offs, to last about a year. But the morose workers passing through Mirafiori's gates doubt that the jobs will ever come back, whatever the firm says about new models and future investment.

　　Fiat Auto will lose around 1 billion ($987m) this year, wiping out profits in other parts of the group, which makes everything from lorries and tractors to robots. Fiat's bosses have been in denial for years about the company's massive over-capacity, the cause of growing losses as sales slumped. Five years ago Fiat Auto made 2.6m cars a year and profits of 758m. Since then it has recorded a loss in every year bar one. This year it will produce barely 1.9m cars. Its banks forced a restructuring in May, and the chief executive of its Fiat group parent had to resign a few weeks later.

　　The pain is bad enough in northern Italy, where unemployment is barely 4%, but it will be felt more elsewhere. The Termini Imerese plant in Sicily is to lay off 1,800 workers. Unions say that cuts among suppliers could double the number of people hit. The local official jobless rate is already 18% (though this ignores a lively "informal" economy). This is posing a nasty problem for the government of Silvio Berlusconi, which polled strongly in Sicily but is not inclined to aid troubled firms.

　　Fiat's belated willingness