Politicians and Unions united against KME job losses

With the recent news that 130 jobs are at risk in the KME foundry at Fornaci di Barga, the political forces in the area started their campaign to safeguard these and other possible job losses in the future. The council in Barga held an outdoor council meeting in the main piazza in Fornaci to make their feelings known to the general public. Not just the council members from the Comune of Barga arrived for the meeting but also the Mayors of a dozen other Comunes in the area all of whom wished to show their solidarity with the workers in Fornaci. National and local union representatives spoke forcefully about their fears for the damage that job cuts of this scale would inflict on this community.

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They were joined on the steps of the Piazza by the President of the Province, Stefano Baccelli , Regional politicians and three members of the Italian Parliament, all of whom publicly voiced their support for the  foundry workers threaten with redundancy.

At the end of the meeting a short text from the Mayor of Barga, Umberto Sereni was read out to the crowd in which he stated quite plainly the position of his administration, maintaining complete solidarity with workers threatened by the job cuts and promising to do everything in their power to stop these cuts from happening.

The only strange note in the whole afternoons proceedings was the more or less total absence of workers from the KME plant in the piazza.