On 25 July five years ago news left the Turinese astonished. Sergio Marchionne, hospitalized in a Swiss hospital for a quick operation on a sore shoulder for some time, as he had confided to his collaborators while setting his agenda for the following week, had suddenly passed away at the age of sixty-six.
Two days earlier, his last appearance had taken place in Rome during the delivery ceremony of a Jeep model to the Carabinieri, to which he had felt particularly close ever since, as a young student and son of a carabiniere, he frequented the local Toronto section of the national association of the Arma.
Over the course of fifteen years, Fiat saw the two symbols of its greatness disappear with the Avvocato in January 2003 and of its rebirth with Marchionne in July 2018.
Who Sergio Marchionne was and how he changed Fiat
Sergio Marchionne was a visionary and nonconformist manager and his style captivated not only financial analysts and stockholders but also Italian trade unions and a large part of the left.
Not to mention the two most powerful men in the world, the presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, who turned to him for the rescue and revival of automobile production in the United States.
"Sergio Marchionne was one of the greatest managers after the legendary Henry Ford", so in Trump's tweet at the news of his death.
As Henry Ford believed his workers should receive high wages in order to be the purchaser of his cars, even for Sergio Marchionne the priority issue was not that of lowering wage levels, which represented only 8% of production costs, but rather that of ensuring a productive regularity such as to satisfy the economic return of the very significant investments.
Paolo Rebaudengo, one of his closest collaborators, recently recalled that Sergio Marchionne he cared a lot about the conditions in which his workers worked, "when he arrived in a factory he looked at the canteen, the changing rooms, the toilets, because for him it was not conceivable that one worked in inadequate structures".
The decisive turning point of the “operaist” Sergio Marchionne (at times he loved to say: “we were all leftists when we were young…”) came in January 2008 when he proposed to the workers Pomigliano the signing of a strategic pact which, if factually accepted with their behaviour, would have brought the plant to the level of the best competition and created the conditions for allocating the production of new future models to the plant.
Pomigliano becomes a model: work organization is revolutionised
The company's commitment would be achieved through a major technological investment plan (over the next 24 months more than 800 interconnected robots will be installed) and a heavy worker training intervention.
For the first time in Fiat, and never resumed by others in Italy, normal activity was suspended for about two months, in the open market, to proceed with a complete reorganization of the production process according to the principles of the new work organization of the World Class Manufacturing, studied and wanted by Sergio Marchionne.
With the WCM, which sees for each workplace the synchrony between man and technological processes, the old Tayloristic division of labor was abandoned, typical of Fordism, between the boss who disposes and the worker who executes and the fundamental need for the company of a real employee involvement, seen not only as a simple consent to innovative interventions, but as awareness of all the objectives relating to one's work areas, starting from that of zero accidents.
In the period of January and February 2008 a training plan was thus created for all the workers of Pomigliano aimed at generating in them self-esteem attitudes and working behaviors in line with the production and quality objectives of a plant with best practices: as, for example, a rate of physiological absenteeism to settle at 1,5-2 percentage points against the previous 6-7%, an injury frequency index from 1,8 to 0, the passage from 126 episodes of micro-conflict in 2007 to zero in subsequent years, an index of proactiveness from 2 to 8-10 proposals/year per worker.
All the costs of the stop, for over 100 million euros, were borne by Fiat, including salaries and the related social security and welfare contributions.
Un extraordinary plan for training of the workers of a plant which did not require any public intervention for financial support, and which in the following years Sergio Marchionne extended to the other Italian plants, allowing them to be positioned at the best European levels of efficiency and quality: a legacy which in fact was passed on to Carlos Tavares, the CEO of Stellantis, the group born from the merger between FCA and PSA.
Sergio Marchionne has not reduced employment or wages
If in the past years the country system has attempted to face the needs of globalization by trying to preserve the competitive potential with the precariousness of work, the reduction of personnel, the compression of economic and regulatory treatments, or with relocations and outsourcing, Sergio Marchionne, on the contrary, has not reduced employment, but has protected it with substantial investments (over 5 billion euros for the Pomigliano, Mirafiori, Melfi and Cassino plants), did not reduce wages, on the contrary the Fiat Contract defined wage levels higher than those of the metalworkers' CCNL, did not relocate abroad, but brought back the production of the Panda from Poland, did not outsource part of the production process, indeed it has taken over the ancillary activities previously contracted out to third parties, has not finally cut the production capacity but has increased it with the acquisition of plants of the automotive industry in crisis.
This is how Giovanni Sgambati, now general secretary of Uil Campania, and one of the main architects of the agreement on the 2010 Pomigliano Contract, recalls him: “I have never seen a manager so convinced of manufacturing. Marchionne wanted to claim to be a metalworker. He was pragmatic and loyal and his great innovation was to believe and focus on the South ”.
From Pomigliano to the blitz on Chrysler
It will be the Chrysler operation in 2009 that will launch Sergio Marchionne into the Olympus of the great managers of the present and past of the automobile, overshadowing personalities such as Carlos Ghosn, the managing director of the Renault-Nissan Group, nicknamed in France "the Sun King of the car", or Richard Wagoner, the historic CEO of General Motors, architect of the GM-Fiat joint venture in early 2000, and disheartened by President Obama.
On the afternoon of 30 March 2009 we met on the fourth floor of the Lingotto building, where the industrial operating program of the Italian plants and any union implications were discussed with Sergio Marchionne.
As Sergio Marchionne likes it, in the meeting room the air conditioning is blazing and the temperature is like the north pole; which is why it is useful to stay well covered even in the height of summer (sweaters excluded, for obvious reasons).
During the discussion, an ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) technician enters and announces that he is ready.
The big screen in the meeting room comes on, showing the White House press room directly via CNN and a voice-over announces the President of the United States of America.
Sergio Marchione opens a folder that he kept at his side and on the sheets it contains he follows Barack Obama's speech word for word.
We are all speechless and, silent and amazed, we look at each other.
The President of the United States announces the Chrysler bailout plan, now in bankruptcy proceedings, presented by Fiat, which enters with 20% of the capital of the American company, and Sergio Marchionne, with the presidential endorsement, is appointed managing director.
In his 800+ page autobiography A Promised Land, the only Italian mentioned by Barack Obama he will not be a government representative or a politician, as for the French, British, Germans, Russians or Japanese, but Sergio Marchionne.
With the acquisition of Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne actually "buys" a share of the American market which will allow him to raise cash and will allow Fiat to gradually increase its stake in Chrysler until it reaches 100% in 2014, when the merger of Fiat with Chrysler in FCA will be approved.
Furthermore, Sergio Marchionne has always been clear that the profits produced in the restored Chrysler had to cover the losses that the Italian plants would still suffer for a long time pending the launch of new products, as envisaged in his latest 2018-2022 Business Plan.
The birth of Stellantis, the electric car revolution
As we know, history then went differently with the establishment of Stellantis and a real revolution underway in the world of cars and sustainable mobility.
Finally, among my many personal memories, I always like to remember the first time he broke into my office. Sergio Marchionne had been appointed CEO of Fiat a few days ago and came to Mirafiori to meet the then head of Fiat Auto, the Austrian Herbert Demel.
The Mirafiori office building was, also in compliance with the Sirchia law, a no building smoking and the Teutonic Herbert Demel had kindly invited Sergio Marchionne not to smoke in his office.
After the meeting, he wanted to know where he could go for a smoke and was told, with sadistic pleasure, to come to me, since I was responsible for enforcing the "no smoking" in the building and the first known offender.
He entered my office while I was smoking, lit a cigarette and asked me, in the time of expiring the cigarette itself, what I thought of the company situation.
Solidarity between smokers materialized over the years. In the meetings, with rare exceptions, it was only the two of us who smoked, and it has always been a pain for him to attend union meetings without being able to light a cigarette.
Sergio Marchionne was also a director of a well-known tobacco multinational and every now and then he sent me a new pack of cigarettes to "try": some time later that pack was also marketed by us.
I have quit smoking for five years.
