"We are a global company." The words uttered by Pasquale Natuzzi during the open city council meeting of the Municipality of Santeramo are probably the best way to understand what is happening today, not only at Natuzzi, but throughout the entire upholstered furniture district between Puglia and Basilicata. ---- For years, that district has been described as one of the success stories of Italian capitalism: factories rooted in the region, local entrepreneurship, widespread employment, exports worldwide. Santeramo, Altamura, Matera, Laterza, Ginosa: names that have shaped a significant part of the industrial geography of Southern Italy.
Today, however, that story reveals all its contradictions.
The long-running Natuzzi dispute, dragged on for months between ministerial discussions, regional meetings, industrial plans, and negotiations breakdowns, is not simply about a corporate crisis. It speaks to something deeper: the transformation of the relationship between business, region, and labor within contemporary globalization.
The company openly discusses restructuring, competitiveness, outsourcing, reshoring, economic and financial stability, and adapting its business model. The language is typical of global corporations, where local communities and work are viewed primarily through the criteria of economic sustainability and the ability to withstand international competition. Indeed, today's Natuzzi is no longer simply a large local factory. It is a company listed on Wall Street, with over a thousand stores worldwide, aiming for international commercial expansion in London, Singapore, and China, while simultaneously redesigning its production structure in the Murgia region.
On the one hand, new stores are announced, along with investments in marketing, international business development, integrated logistics, and the creation of new service companies. On the other, redundancies, plant closures, staff redeployments, early retirement incentives, layoffs, and labor cost reductions are discussed.
This is where the phrase "we are a global company" takes on its true meaning.
It doesn't just mean selling products worldwide. Above all, it means that the region enters into permanent competition with other regions.
Santeramo competes with Romania. The Murgia region competes with other international production areas. And workers are pushed to compete with other workers within a global supply chain governed by cost reduction.
In fact, one of the central points of the negotiations concerns reshoring, that is, the possible return to Italy of some production currently relocated abroad. But even this return is subject to a specific condition: economic sustainability. In other words: production is only allowed here if it's sufficiently profitable.
In this sense, globalization doesn't eliminate the region. It transforms it into an economic variable. For decades, the industrial district had functioned as a relatively integrated production community, founded on the presence of local labor, local supply chains, widespread knowledge, and a strong connection between the factory and the social fabric. The growth of businesses coincided, at least in part, with that of the region that hosted them.
Today, however, that model appears profoundly changed.
The district survives only if it manages to remain competitive within a global supply chain dominated by cost pressures, production mobility, and financialization.
And here another clear contradiction emerges. On the one hand, institutions continue to portray Natuzzi as a symbol of productive Puglia, a local asset, a symbol of Made in Italy excellence, almost a "beacon" of southern industrial development. On the other, however, the entire discussion about the group's future revolves around the need to reduce costs, reorganize production, outsource activities, incentivize exits, and utilize social safety nets to keep the company competitive.
The role of the Regions also fits within this logic. There is talk of tax relief, active policies, training funds, and public support and investment instruments. In practice, the local area is being called upon to financially support the continued existence of the global enterprise, in an attempt to make it sufficiently competitive compared to other production areas.
The language of "zero redundancy" also illustrates this ambiguity. The redundancies don't really disappear: they're transformed into early retirements, exit incentives, relocations, mobility, and layoffs. The social problem isn't eliminated, but rather redistributed over time and gradually absorbed by the local community and public welfare.
It's no coincidence that the unions have spoken of workers "paying twice": as factory workers, with reduced wages and years of social safety nets, and as citizens, through the public support guaranteed to the company.
And this is perhaps the most important political point of the story.
Social safety nets, which once represented an extraordinary tool for addressing temporary crises, have now become a structural component of the production model. The crisis no longer appears as an exceptional event, but as a permanent condition of industrial life.
Meanwhile, financial pressure is also growing. The listing on the New York Stock Exchange, budget difficulties, the risk of delisting, and delays in wage payments show how even a historic Italian manufacturing company is now immersed in the logic of global finance.
And so the Natuzzi affair is no longer just a local dispute.
It becomes the story of a broader transformation: that of a capitalism that maintains the brands, symbols, and rhetoric of the local area, but increasingly organizes production, work, and investments according to global profitability criteria.
For years, the upholstered furniture district has been held up as an example of regional development. Today, that same story is showing its reverse. When a company says, "We are a global company," it's also saying that its relationship with the local area is no longer a stable bond, but one continually challenged by global competition, financial profitability, and the ability to reduce costs and labor.
And in this competition, local communities suddenly discover that they are no longer the center of industrial history, but just one variable among others. Workers, however, had already learned this the hard way.
Totò Caggese
https://umanitanova.org/competizione-globale-fragilita-sociale-la-crisi-natuzzi-e-la-trasformazione-del-distretto-del-mobile-imbottito/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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