Acciaierie d'Italia, now in receivership, has requested the layoff fund for 3,926 workers, including more than 3,500 at the Taranto plant. The decision comes after the halving of production following the seizure of blast furnace 1, which was affected on May 7 by a serious fire caused by a pipe burst. The request also affects 178 workers from Genoa, 165 from Novi Ligure, and 45 from Racconigi. The reaction of the unions was immediate, with FIOM-CGIL rejecting the idea of social shock absorbers without guarantees on the company's future. “It cannot be that the workers pay the consequences of not starting decarbonization,” said Luigi Scarpa, FIOM's national steel coordinator. “This puts wages, employment and safety at risk”. FIOM calls for transparency and a real confrontation on the industrial plan: "For months we have been denouncing the insufficiency of resources to restart the plants. We will not accept an indefinite and dead-end layoff. We will discuss this with the workers and the other unions".