MSC is taking over a site near the port of Trieste, formerly used by Wärtsila, which will be reconverted into a rail freight wagons and bogies manufacturing plant. The 261 employees who will be transferred from Wärtsila to MSC recently approved the transitional plan. Now, the finalisation of the agreement is expected for tomorrow at the Italian Ministry of Made in Italy, where all the parties involved will meet.
The new subsidiary of MSC in charge of the plant will be called Innoway Trieste. The official transfer of the employees, who are currently under a Redundancy Fund, will be effective as of 1 August 2024. Then, the actual takeover will commence, with a progressive reintegration of the 261 workers throughout the next three years. For this initiative, the Swiss shipping giant is investing somewhere around 100 million euros.
At the end of June, a few concerns surfaced as the negotiations between Wärtsila and the former employees, represented by three trade unions, seemed to have been stagnating. One of the requests from the trade unions was the extension of the Redundancy Fund, scheduled to expire on 30 June 2024, for at least another month. Wärtsila agreed, as one of the trade unions highlighted on Facebook, and 99 per cent of the workers voted in favour of all the other proposals as well, prepping the ground for this new project led by MSC.