Stellantis offers laid-off Maserati workers to buy 80K car at “Special Prices”

The automotive group formed by Peugeut’s acquisition of FCA, Stellantis, is losing favor in Italy due to its inability to handle even the most basic labor relations and its reduction of car production in the Peninsula.

All Stellantis employees on the Maserati line in Mirafiori who were laid off in the first quarter of the year and subsequently placed on a solidarity contract with an 80% reduction in hours until the end of 2024 are starting to take legal action according to an email sent by the company to them.

The email reads, “Dear colleague, we are pleased to announce that from September you will have the opportunity to purchase a Maserati car at conditions dedicated to you.” A list of automobiles that cost at least 80,000 euros, or almost 90.000 USD,  comes next. There is just enough to raise indignation among Turin workers, who earn figures of just over 1,110 euros a month. They feel so much that the company that continues to pay you starvation wages is mocking them, and for good reason.

Stellantis: email about Maseratis risks becoming a case

“This is a mockery; we earn just over 1,100 euros a month. We are incredulous”: this is the prevailing reaction among Mirafiori workers after receiving the email about Maseratis with dedicated conditions. Not least because it is complicated to think what conditions could push those who earn 1,110 euros or a little more to shell out a minimum of 80 thousand euros to buy a car.

Salaries that have shrunk because of the ongoing crisis in sales volumes. During the first six months of the year, in fact, the Piedmont factory churned out just 1,850 Maseratis. Volumes that are unlikely to grow in the coming months. After returning from vacation, the Maserati line in Mirafiori is working just one day a week. So much so that the unions fear the arrival of a new batch of layoffs.

All that remains to be seen is how the automotive group born in 2021 from the merger of the French company PSA (formerly Peugeot-Citröen) and the Italian-American company FCA (risen from the merger of Fiat and Chrysler) will now justify itself. Proposing the purchase of cars that can fetch as much as over 200,000 euros to those who are struggling to support a family with dignity represents something abnormal, so much so that many of those concerned say they feel blatantly mocked.

The reactions of those affected

It should be noted, moreover, that the e-mail notice was also sent to thousands of people who were laid off or on solidarity contracts. People who, therefore, have not seen a full salary for some time now and with what is coming, they have to make ends meet at a time when inflation continues to run rampant.

According to several impacted, one is unsure of how to react to an injury like this—one does not know whether to laugh or cry. Because only injury can be spoken of when faced with the proposal of favorable conditions for buying cars such as Maseratis that would entail a minimum of seven years of salaries in order to own one. Impossible conditions not only for those on reduced salaries but also for those willing to accept Stellantis ‘ recent invitation to work in Poland as relocators.

Meanwhile, CEO Carlos Tavarez earned 36 million euros in 2023.

This company landslide is also putting Mirafiori at risk

Paradoxically, the incriminating email constitutes to date the least of the problems for Stellantis and its workers. It is in fact a resounding autogoal in terms of image within a game that the company is losing with very heavy outcomes.

Indeed, the industrial choices of recent years have resulted in an ever-deepening crisis. Such as to put even Mirafiori, the symbol of the country’s industrialization, at risk. Fewer and fewer cars are being produced in the group’s Italian plants, in the face of state aid that continues to be extremely heavy. Governments, of whatever color, do not skimp on government aid and layoffs. With less and less significant outcomes.

While at the beginning of the year Stellantis had issued a solemn commitment to increased production within the sites scattered along the peninsula, in practice this has not been the case. The indicated one million cars is now considered a mirage. While production in 2023 stood at 752 thousand vehicles, a 30 percent drop from that figure is expected in 2024. At least according to preliminary estimates.