Italy strikes deal with Turkey's Beko to reduce job cuts, minister says

By Alvise Armellini

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's government has brokered a deal between Turkish home appliances maker Beko and trade unions to reduce planned job cuts in the country, Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said on Wednesday.

Beko, owned by Arcelik, said in November it was planning to cut almost 2,000 positions as part of a turnaround drive at its Italian operations.

The company has now agreed to more than halve the number of redundancies, and to handle them on a voluntary rather than compulsory basis, Urso said in the lower house of parliament.

"It is a positive and in many ways unexpected result," the minister said.

A spokesperson for Beko had no comment.

Beko confirmed a commitment made in January to invest 300 million euros ($332 million) in Italy, up from an initial pledge of 110 million euros in November, and pulled back on plant closure plans, Urso said.

In November, Beko said it would close two sites, one in Tuscany's Siena and the other in the central Marche region. Urso said no factory would now shut, but Siena would be taken over by state-owned agency Invitalia and used for other purposes.

The Fim, Fiom, Uilm and Uglm unions said in a joint statement that a "preliminary" deal was agreed, which would be put to a workers' vote, and, if approved, finalised next week.

Urso said April 14 would be the date for the final signature.

The unions did not comment on the details of the deal, which was reached overnight at the industry ministry in Rome after more than 12 hours of negotiations between the company and workers' representatives. Beko took on the loss-making Italian operations as part of its 2023 purchase of Whirlpool's European domestic appliances business.

($1 = 0.9048 euros)

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, Editing by Bernadette Baum, Ed Osmond and Mark Potter)