Four police injured in Alcoa demonstration in Rome

Four police were hurt in a clash between Alcoa and Carbosulcis demonstrators, and security forces in Rome Monday. Two members of the local police, a member of the state police and a member of the finance police were injured. Hundreds of workers from the Alcoa aluminum plant and the Carbosulcis coal company both working in southwestern Sardinia demonstrated Monday in front of the Ministry of Economic Development, throwing paper bombs, firecrackers and shouting slogans. The workers tried to defend their jobs at industrial entities that have become grossly uncompetitive, while government officials, union leaders and Alcoa representatives met inside the ministry Monday to formulate a plan to resolve the Alcoa industrial dispute and possibly save the Alcoa plant by finding a buyer willing to take it on. The soaring cost of energy in Italy put the aluminum plant in peril and is destroying other energy-intensive industries, Giorgio Squinzi, the president of Italys largest industrial employers confederation Confindustria, said last week. During Mondays meeting, Alcoa management said it was willing to open negotiations with Swiss multinational Klesch for the Sardinian plant after another possible suitor, the Swiss commodities multinational Glencore, appeared to hesitate. Klesch is the only company to have submitted a formal expression of interest, said the FIM unions national secretary Marco Bentivogli, who took part in Mondays meeting in Rome. Last week, Alcoa met with Glencore in the Sardinian governors office in Cagliari. Alcoa postponed procedures to dismantle its plant - at the unions request while it entered talks with Glencore. Glencore asked for a number of clarifications but has not formalized its interest in writing, Undersecretary of EconomicDevelopment Claudio De Vincenti told unions at the Rome meeting Monday. Alcoa managers confirmed its plan to begin shutdown of the aluminum plant, De Vincenti told unions Monday. Last week, three ALCOA workers bivouacked atop a 70 metre silo for three nights in protest. Workers of the Carbosulcis coal company staged an eight-day protest 375 metres underground at the Nuraxi Figus mine in southwestern Sardinia at about the same time.