“I have a mortgage, two young children and my wife doesn’t work. Since last Thursday I’ve only seen black people. I’m counting down the days until I no longer have a paycheck to support my family with.” It is just one of the voices that rise from the chorus of disbelief, dismay and discouragement. Those 200 redundancies are 200 faces that turned pale on Thursday at the news of the closure of the Rocchetta plant and the downsizing of the historic Fabriano paper mill. An employment crisis that involves not only the production of office paper, but also the maintenance, materials management and shipping sectors. Many stories, many families who risk not making it to the end of the month or seeing the hope of being relocated in a job market, that of Fabriano, which is increasingly poor in opportunities relating to manufacturing. There is no shortage of broadsides for what many judge to be a crisis that has already been announced: “It is unacceptable that the regional council, despite the numerous alarm signals, remained immobile for the umpteenth time until the situation worsened – thunders Chantal Bomprezzi, regional secretary of the Marche Democratic Party – Acquaroli should have woken up earlier, involving the Ministry of Business to seek solutions that would avoid this serious loss of employment. Furthermore, our regional councilors had already expressed concern about the matter several times, but they always remained unheard”. The regional Democratic Party then announces: “We will be present at the open Fabriano municipal council next Saturday, to listen to and support the workers’ requests”.
“The scheme is always the same: bringing up the Region and the Government for the damage caused by years of misgovernment led by the PD, both at a regional and national level – counterattacks Silvia Marchesini, president of the Fdi club of Fabriano -. We won’t bother asking who he was in command (and for years) when healthcare was dismantled and when, with the cry of “Europe asks us for it”, all national assets were sold off, from the energy sector to the metallurgical sector, the strategic sectors were dismembered, privatized and sold to the highest bidder. We recall the sale of Poligrafico to the Fedrigoni group, conceived by the Prodi and D’Alema governments, with Bersani, Minister of Industry at the end of the 1990s, and the sale by Fedrigoni to the Bain fund in 2018, Government Gentiloni (Pd) with the good Calenda Minister of Productive Activities”.