Word: fiat
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...start banking more of their paycheck instead of spending it. "The energy shortage should lessen the popularity of shopping as a sport," laments Sumner Feldberg, chairman of Massachusetts-based Zayre discount stores. "We're in for a period of tough retailing." Says Dick Balch, a suburban Seattle Chevrolet-Fiat dealer: "It looks to me as if the economy has just plain stopped...
Italy's auto mammoth, Fiat, the second largest in Europe and sixth largest in the world, was considered until recently the private-enterprise showpiece of the Italian economy. Today, racked by labor troubles, declining sales, and most of all government interference in its affairs, it is being mentioned as a possible candidate for partial state owner ship. The company's leaders, 53-year-old Chairman Giovanni Agnelli and his 39-year-old brother, Managing Director Umberto, are deeply committed to keeping the company in the private sector, but they face conditions that Umberto has publicly labeled impossible...
...weeks ago, indeed, a fed-up Umberto tried to quit in protest against a government-imposed labor contract that he considered the last straw. Umberto himself had asked Italy's Socialist Labor Minister Luigi Bertoldi to medi ate a three-month-old strike and slow down among Fiat's 200,000 workers...
Acting out of political considerations, as he freely conceded, Bertoldi granted the unions a $150 million settlement containing practically everything they asked for, including a $32 a month pay increase that was $8 higher than the company's final offer. Umberto handed in his resignation, but the Fiat board persuaded him to stay...
...what effect is unclear: Umberto has stated that the contract makes it impossible for Fiat to operate at a profit. The award will raise labor costs 11.5%, on top of a 17% hike last year. Meanwhile, government regulations have clamped a lid on the prices that Fiat can charge, and its auto sales are down by as much as 45% because of apprehension over the energy situation. Even before the award, the company had slipped about $30 million into the red last year, its first loss in recent history...