Electrolux withdraws the dismissals but not the job cuts, and the suppliers were not at the ministry's table
5 October 2026, 18:22
May 2026. Electrolux announces 1,700 dismissals in Italy and the closure of its plant at Cerreto d'Esi, in the Marche region. The stated reasons: weak European demand and Asian manufacturers, who sell at prices that cannot be matched with European costs.
Today, at the Ministry of Enterprises, the plan changes. No unilateral dismissals: in their place, up to 1,250 voluntary, incentivised departures over three years, cushioned by the cassa integrazione straordinaria (Italy's extraordinary wage-support scheme), and €90 million of announced investment. Cerreto closes all the same, later on, with a reindustrialisation project. The minister, Adolfo Urso, promises to back the plan "with all the tools, including extraordinary ones" in the next budget law.
The sums were done by Uilm, the metalworkers' branch of the Uil union: on top of the 1,250 departures come 135 fixed-term contracts that will not be renewed. That makes 1,385 jobs out of 1,700, roughly four in five. The dismissals have vanished, the job cuts have not. The name has changed, and so has the timetable: three years make less noise than a letter.
There is no need to play public prosecutor with Electrolux. A group losing out to Asian prices cuts, and does so with the tools the law puts in its hands. The bigger problem lies outside the ministry's meeting room.
Around Porcia, in the province of Pordenone, Electrolux has at least fifty suppliers, according to Comet, which brings together the metalworking industry of Friuli Venezia Giulia: sheet metal, precision engineering, wiring, electronics. At the end of March this year, the Pordenone and Udine Chamber of Commerce counted 1,245 business sites in the region's household-appliance supply chain. The ones that actually build the finished product number 25.
The others were not at the table. The Struttura per le crisi d'impresa (Business Crisis Unit), the ministry office that opens those tables, says on its website that it deals with companies "of significant size". For the small workshop that works sheet metal for Porcia there is no incentivised departure: when Electrolux produces less, fewer orders come in, and nobody announces it at a press conference. In the supply chain, the severance package stops at the first link.
It is the restaurant that closes: the waiters get their severance pay and a handshake, the fishmonger who supplied it gets the shutter pulled down on Monday morning, with the crate still in his hands.
The question is for the ministry, which wraps up the negotiations on 29 October: do the extraordinary tools of the budget law apply to those who assemble the washing machines, or also to those who cut their sheet metal?
Dismissals can be withdrawn at the ministry. Orders that never arrive are withdrawn by nobody.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Sole 24 Ore on 5 October 2026.