Workers don’t know how long they will be working, but at the moment there is some work to be done. They are coming back after a paid leave and collective annual leave. However, it is not known how many days they’ll spend in the production hall. What we do know is that the factory management is authorised by the government to send workers to a paid leave till the end of the current month. It will depend on the number of orders and the automobile industry market. Unfortunately, main markets where ‘FIAT 500L’ has been sold, such as in Italy, Spain and France, marked the biggest drop in demand for new cars, which during previous months amounted to even 70%, just to fall down to around 50%.
Preparations for the beginning of the new work cycle were made a week ago and with due respect of all protection measures the production is about to start. This means that upon entering the factory workers will have their temperature measured, they will get two masks, gloves and spray to disinfect their work place. Prescribed distance has to be respected, both in halls and the canteen.
When the COVID-19 epidemic started in March, workers of FIAT worked only for two weeks. They were on a paid leave from March 16 till July 7 because the automobile markets were getting closed around Europe. At first, they used up 45 days of annual leave, allowed in a single calendar year, during which they received 65% of their salary. At the beginning of May, factory management asked the government for additional 80 days of paid leave for workers and received the approval. The expiry date is the last day of September.
Throughout the year FIAT worked with reduced capacity, partly because of the corona virus, which fiercely hit the automobile market, and partly because the market for 500L almost doesn’t exist. It is saturated,so a lot of hope is invested in merging FIAT and Peugeot because it might result in a new model.
Anyway, this year’s production in FIAT will surely be the lowest since 2012, when the production in Kragujevac halls was renewed.
According to some estimates, since the beginning of this year there were 15,000-20,000 pieces of 500L model that have been made in FIAT factory in Kragujevac, which is almost six times less than in 2013, when a record number of 117,000 vehicles were produced on the assembly lines. Due to the fact that for past several years the export has been continuously slowing down and a significant drop in demand for cars during the pandemic occurred, FIAT isn’t among the five biggest exporters any more. Last year it was ranked second, just tofall down to the sixth place. In order to go back to the leading position it held for a long time, the recovery of global automobile industry is necessary, as well as the launch of the production of a new model. Whether and with what amount would the government help the factory in Kragujevac in 2020 is yet to be seen. In the past, they helped FIAT – only last year the company received grants and subsidies amounting to 2.5 billion dinars. But it was at the time when situation was much better, which makes the future of the automobile giant in Serbia utterly uncertain.
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