Fiat workers strike over Ronaldo

Updated July 17: Bloomberg has reported only five (yes 5!) workers turned up to the Melfi Ronaldo protest. "A strike called by a small union at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV to protest the purchase of Cristiano Ronaldo by Juventus Football Club SpA became viral news on social media last week. Only five workers showed up at the protest on Monday though... Turnout for the strike amounted to 0.3 per cent of the 1700 workers at the first shift of the Melfi assembly plant in southern Italy, the first of a two-day protest organized by the USB union," the news outlet reported.

France may have won the World Cup but Fiat’s union has gone on strike over the Juventus soccer club’s €112 million ($A176.3m) signing of Portuguese football star, Ronaldo.

The USB union insisted that the Juventus club’s decision to sign Ronaldo from Real Madrid was so expensive that it would cost worker’s jobs and slash investment in the Italian car-maker.

Both Fiat (the mainstream Italian brand arm of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) and Juventus are controlled by the Agnelli family’s holding company, Exor.

It insisted the four-year deal would punish Italian workers and suggested the team had overpaid for the 33-year-old, who scored 450 goals in 438 games for Real Madrid.

The USB is not one of the major unions in Fiat’s seven Italian car-making plants, so the strike is not expected to have a major impact.

The union insisted Fiat should be concentrating on creating and maintaining thousands of jobs instead of “enriching only one” and that it was shocked that it would make the move when workers were “making huge economic sacrifices”.

It is on strike from Sunday night until Tuesday night at the Melfi plant in Italy’s south, causing a halt to Punto and 500X production, though sales are so slow few will notice the Punto’s absence.