Former Ilva: the wage-support decree protects only the contractors that live off the steelworks. Those who looked for other customers are left out
1 November 2026, 15:56
On 13 October the Council of Ministers approved a €187 million decree-law for the workers of the former Ilva, the Taranto steelworks that the State runs under extraordinary administration through commissioners and that has barely produced anything for weeks. Until 30 June 2027 the decree funds the cassa integrazione, that is, the part of the wage paid to those left without work, for the employees of Acciaierie d'Italia and for about 4,200 workers in the supply chain, the outside firms that work for the plant. For the latter, however, it sets a condition: the company must have made at least half of its turnover with Acciaierie d'Italia in the previous two years.
At the plant, the canteen and cleaning are contracted to a catering group with sites all over Italy, which employs about 470 people there and does not earn half of its income from that contract. For this reason, according to the unions, those workers would be excluded from the supply-chain wage support, while their work has already shrunk with the closure of some departments. They are not the only ones: the Taranto crisis has lasted more than ten years, in the meantime several firms have found other clients, and precisely for this reason, unions and companies warn, the decree's criteria risk leaving them out. Those who did what every business is advised to do, not depend on a single buyer, now discover that this very dependence was the condition for being protected.
For Acciaierie d'Italia, on the other hand, the public purse has opened many times. Since 2012 successive governments have put at least 3.6 billion into the former Ilva, according to a calculation from January 2026, and that money comes from everyone's taxes. In the two years of extraordinary administration the State has lent it 340 million, which any buyer will have to repay, and it recently assigned another 100 million, intended, as a legal provision clarified, also to pay those who have worked for the commissioners. The supply-chain firms grouped in a Taranto association estimate they are owed at least 35 million, against 28 in September, and are asking the commissioners when they will be paid. The State has set aside money to pay the supply chain too; the suppliers' claims, meanwhile, have grown.
The decree is before the Senate, which can amend it, and Parliament has sixty days from publication to convert it into law. Unions and firms are asking for the half of turnover to be calculated on the Taranto site alone rather than on the whole company, or for the threshold to be lowered; a supply-chain association has sent its proposals to the Minister of Labour.
The State has been looking for a buyer for the former Ilva for some time without finding one, while it asks the supply-chain firms, in order to protect their workers, to prove that the steelworks bought at least half of what they sold.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Quotidiano di Puglia on 1 November 2026.