Fiat signs one-year labor deal for workers at Italian plants

Fiat SpA signed a collective labor deal with most unions representing its Italian employees, as workers agreed to increased shifts and shorter breaks in exchange for a 20-billion euro ($26 billion) investment plan.

Fiat workers will get an increase in their base salary and receive 10 percent more pay for overtime work, the Uilm union said today, without giving more details on the increase. Workers will also receive a 600-euro production bonus in 2012, the union said. Fiat confirmed that a deal had been reached.

The one-year contract goes into effect in January for the 86,000 Fiat and Fiat Industrial SpA workers in Italy. The labor agreement is part of Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne’s strategy of raising productivity at Turin, Italy-based Fiat’s domestic plants as he aims to end losses in Europe by 2014.

“With a more efficient Italian production footprint, Fiat is aiming to utilize the Italian production base to produce Chrysler product,” Goldman Sachs analyst Stefan Burgstaller wrote in a note to clients Dec. 12. Fiat controls Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler Group LLC.

Fiom Cgil, the carmaker’s biggest union and the only one not to sign the agreement, has claimed the deal curtails worker rights. It earlier this week led an eight-hour strike at the company’s Italian plants. The union’s roughly 10,000 workers will nonetheless fall under the agreement.