Fiat's Sicily workers strike; bigger protest set for this weekend

PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) -- Workers at Fiat's Termini Imerese plant in Sicily stopped work and blocked a road on Thursday. They are upset following reports that the facility would be closed under plans to create the world's second-largest carmaker.

Fiat workers were due to travel to Turin, the company's corporate base, on Saturday for a major demonstration against plant closures.

Fiat S.p.A. has agreed to take a 20 percent stake in U.S. automaker Chrysler in an expansion strategy to help it deal with the downturn in global auto markets. The Italian automaker also is talking with General Motors about acquiring its the European operations.

German unions have told Italian counterparts the Fiat proposal involved downsizing its Pomigliano d'Arco plant near Naples and closing the Termini facility, which employs about 1,400 workers making Lancia vehicles.

Fiat has not made its plans public.

"It's normal that tensions are high, especially amongst the youngsters who risk more than those who are close to retirement," Berto Mastrosimone, representative of the CGIL union federation, told local television outside the plant.

"There is a lot of tension and its building up to a clash. I certainly don't think it will stop today," he said.

Television images showed a few hundred workers gathered peacefully outside the plant's main entrance, preventing vehicles from entering and blocking traffic on the road outside.

A spokesman for Fiat at its Turin headquarters said about half the workers at the Termini Imerese plant stopped working from 7.00 a.m. local until 8.30 a.m., and just over a third then stopped work between 9.20 a.m. and 11.00 a.m.

Fiat workers were due to travel to Turin on Saturday for a major demonstration against plant closures.

Italian union leaders have met with German counterparts and said they would adopt a common position about the shutting of European plants.

"No plant must close," Enzo Masini of Italy's FIOM-CGIL union told Reuters on Wednesday after the union meeting.