Worker buyouts (WBOs) have almost doubled since the economic crisis started in 2008. Italy's legal framework facilitates WBOs in so far as it allows workers who are made redundant to invest their compensation amounts into a partial or total buy-out of their workplace and getting it back to a working concern, and all this with support from unions, co-operatives and State related funds.
The most recent WBO concerns Ora Office de Pomezia in Rome. On 20 January 2016 it started as a share capital co-operative with support from the unions and Legacoop du Latium*. Twenty workers out of the former fifty managed to resurrect their former business, Ora Acciaio, which manufactures high-end furniture and which went bankrupt in 2014. Further south, Italy’s first metals WBO occurred at Italcables de Caivano (Naples), a world leader in the production of cabling, that was taken over...
Do you have information to share with us?