Italy unions seek Stellantis, Ferrari wage rise of 8.4% for 2023 – source

By Giulio Piovaccari

MILAN (Reuters) -Italian unions representing workers at Stellantis, Ferrari, Iveco and CNH Industrial will on Monday demand a wage rise of 8.4% to be paid in 2023 to offset rising inflation, a senior union source told Reuters.

Europe’s cost-of-living crisis is putting upward pressure on wage inflation as companies across the continent face demands from workers to cushion the impact of rising prices. Consumer prices rose 8.9% year on year in Italy in September.

The request for salary increases is part of the proposal for a new four-year contract that metal workers unions FIM-CISL, UILM, Fismic, UGLM and AQCF will present later on Monday for most Italian employees at the four industrial groups as they prepare for official talks.

The current contracts expire at the end of this year.

They affect almost 70,000 workers in Italy, two thirds of them at the former Fiat-Chrysler, which last year merged with France’s PSA to create Stellantis.

Carmakers Stellantis and Ferrari, truckmaker Iveco and agricultural and construction machine maker CNH Industrial, all of them with the Agnelli family’s holding company Exor as a major shareholder, share the same specific basic contract for most of their Italian employees.

This is separate from a national contract for workers in other parts of the metal and mechanical sector.

Stellantis, with brands including Fiat, Peugeot, Jeep, Alfa Romeo and Opel, said last week it would provide a one-off bonus worth up to 1,400 euros to most of its employees in France to help them cope with surging inflation.

(Writing by Giulio Piovaccari, editing by Gianluca Semeraro and Keith Weir)