Fiat workers fear the future

Thousands of workers blocked roads and demonstrated outside factories across Italy on Friday -- the first in what is expected to be a series of nationwide protests against the once-great automaker's plans to slash its workforce and cut its debt.

The strike began after negotiations to revive the trouble company collapsed, clearing the way for Fiat, once the biggest carmaker in Europe, to launch its first wave of 5,600 layoffs on Monday.

The Fiat plant at Termini Imerese, a rundown industrial town, will feel the effects immediately, with its 1,800 workers due to be sent home on temporary lay-offs with minimal pay on Monday.

"I feel like 30 years of my life just went down the drain," Salvatore Lo Duca, 50, a Termini employee who joined Fiat in 1970, told Reuters. "All of us here have poured our lives into this company, and yet there feels like there's nothing in return."

Fiat pledged not to shut the Termini plant because the government is worried about the impact the plant closure would have on the economy.

Instead, it said it would reduce production at the plant to a trickle until next September when it will take back the bulk of the workers laid off and restart full production.

But workers in Termini Imerese fear the jobs will be lost permanently.

"I'm 55, I've done this all my life, what else am I going to do," asked employee Michele Manzo. "Here, unemployment is already 25 percent. Fiat is all there was, there aren't any other jobs."

Manzo, married with two children, takes home about "1,100 euros ($1,100) a month as the sole bread-winner in the family, with mortgage payments of "400 euros a month. (more....)