Private welfare for workers. Corporate welfare at Fiat in the era of Vittorio Valletta (1946-1966)¹

ABSTRACT

Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino) was for a good part of the twentieth century Italy’s largest industrial company. Historians and sociologists have extensively investigated its productive expansion in the automotive industry, as well as the leading role it played in introducing and applying Taylorist and Fordist techniques of mass production to the Italian manufacturing sector. The analysis of the organization of the social policies that the company established for its employees from the 1920s onward has been, however, less considered. Yet, the complex of welfare, recreational and cultural services made available to workers was so pervasive that it seems interesting to reconstruct its history and assess the impact it had on the lives of employees. It can be argued that the corporate welfare made up by the Turin company during the years when Vittorio Valletta led it (1946–1966) was an integral element of the Fordist model of mass production, aimed not only to counterbalance the strain of assembly line work with social benefits, but also to replicate in daily life the regimentation that office and factory workers experienced in the hours they spent in the mills.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate welfare
• Italy
• Fiat
• workers

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the staff of the Fiat Historical Archives (particularly Pierpaolo Righero) and the 1900s Centre for their helpfulness and courtesy in allowing me to consult the company and union records they hold. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their advice on how to improve the text of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A reduced and simplified version of this article was presented at the Conference ‘Work and Wellbeing in History’, held at the Oslo Metropolitan University on June 8th and 9th, 2023, and at the séminaire doctoral ‘Histoire du Travail’, held at the Université Paris Nanterre on January 20th, 2023. I sincerely thank the participants of both events for their comments on the research topic.

2. In 1946 Fiat owned 13 plants between the city of Turin and its surroundings, assigned to sections aimed at steel and metallurgical production, motor vehicles and tractors, railroad equipment, diesel engines, gas turbines and airplanes. See Amatori (1999), pp. 264–266.

3. In 1949, the Italian government launched a great public plan to build low-cost housing for workers of industrial companies. The plan, known as the Ina-Case plan or the Fanfani plan (in the name of the Minister of Labor at the time, who was its promoter) was completed over nearly a decade, with the help of large companies, which provided the building areas and some of the financing, and the National Insurance Institute (Istituto nazionale per le assicurazioni – Ina), a public body devoted to the insurance business, to which the ownership of social housing once built was assigned. See Istituto Luigi Sturzo (2002).

4. According to company sources, the average monthly earnings of all Fiat workers was 37,390 thousand liras in 1948, compared with 25,102 thousand liras for all workers of Italian industry. In 1954 those figures had become, respectively 70,782 thousand liras and 36,432 thousand liras. See Le provvidenze sussidiarie ed integrative Fiat (n.d., tab. 7).

5. The Terni Company’s social expenditures for its employees, for example, producing electricity, steel, and chemical fertilizers, grew from 1946 to 1953 with respect to a fall in the total wages paid by the firm, and until the early 1960s the trends in the two indicators levelled out. See Raspadori (2012), pp. 198–199, figures 2–3.

6. In the early 1960s, both a survey carried out among a sample of workers by the pro-employer union Sindacato dell’automobile (Sida) and a survey carried out by sociologist Giuseppe Bonazzi among another sample of employees revealed the dissatisfaction of a large proportion of Fiat’s low-skilled employees with working conditions inside the plants and with the difficulties of housing and home-to-work transport in the city of Turin. At the same time, however, the same surveys were pointing out the workers’ high approval of the excellent performance of the company’s welfare institutions such as Malf, summer camps for employees’ children and the Fiat sports-recreational club (Fissore, 2001, pp. 132–140). See also Passerini and Filippa (1997), pp. 342–343.

7. In 1952 the company established the ‘loyalty bonus’ (premio fedeltà), a retirement benefit supplementary to the public pension, which was given to employees who reached 30 years of service with Fiat and 65 years of age (60 if women). Loyalty bonus recipients and their spouses were receiving Malf health care while retired; the allowance was 23,000 liras per month for men and 17,500 for women. See Notizia riassuntiva sul Premio di fedeltà Fiat (1952).

8. In the spaces of one of Fiat’s very first plants, on Corso Dante, beginning in 1946 the equipment to start the vocational training of aspiring laborers and internship courses for high school and college graduates to be hired later in the company was gathered. The courses were open to all, while maintaining a preference for children and relatives of company employees. In 1947 the Fiat General Management created the Technical Education Coordination (Coordinamento istruzione tecnica) and entrusted its control to Aldo Peroni (formerly a teacher at the ‘Amedeo Avogadro’ Technical Institute), who headed the Pupils School. Peroni took pains to recruit a teaching staff expert in drawing, calculus, mechanics, Italian and English language, from the various branches of Fiat, in addition to a set of skilled instructors already attached to the various workshops of the firm. Concerning the vocational qualification degree, for example, from 1948 to 1966 3,912 students obtained the title, almost all of whom were then assigned to the various production departments of Fiat. See Berta (1997), pp. 109–116; Raspadori (2021), p. 104; Ex allievi qualificati e assegnati in sezione (1973) (my elaborations).

9. See, for example, Illustrato Fiat (1955), ‘Special number for the 10th anniversary of the death of Giovanni Agnelli’, founder of Fiat. News of employees’ weddings, births of their children, funerals, and silver and golden wedding anniversaries also appeared regularly in the company’s in-house periodical, furnished by related photos. The purpose, probably, was to instill an atmosphere of family intimacy to readers (workers and their relatives) and to raise a psychological analogy between the company and their households.

10. Valletta used to refer to his managers as ‘officers’ and to chief foremen and middle managers as ‘non-commissioned officers’, and to consider under the lens of military discipline the hierarchical relationships within the factory. See Bairati (1983), pp. 170, 267; Revelli (1989), pp. 39–40; Relazione di bilancio del Consiglio di amministrazione all’Assemblea ordinaria dei soci (1955).

11. Questioning some elderly workers at the Fiat Ferriere in January 1956 as to why they were still staying at work, the members of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Conditions of Workers had been told that if they retired, they would receive a too low income (between 5,000 and 13,000 liras per month). See “Ferriere – Interrogatori singoli del 19 e 20 gennaio” (1956).

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Paolo Raspadori

Paolo Raspadori is assistant professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Humanities, University of Perugia, since October 2010. He studies the history of labor and industrial corporations in Italy. He is currently working on the social policies activated by large companies in the 20th century, the inequality of income and experiences of consumption since the second half of the 20th century, and the history of the Made in Italy food from 1950 to 1970.