Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne reportedly has been accused of hiring “Italian peasants” to re-landscape his luxurious Swiss villa for a third of the minimum wage.
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Unia, a leading Swiss trade union, claimed Marchionne had brought labourers in from Italy to avoid having to pay a normal Swiss wage, the Daily Telegraph said.
“We discovered what he was doing after a routine check,” a union spokesman was quoted as saying. “By paying his workers around seven Swiss francs an hour (£3), he has saved himself around 30,000 Swiss francs.”
The report noted that Fiat last year paid Marchionne a salary of EUR8.3m (GBP5.6m).
The paper said Marchionne, an Italian who was educated in Canada, has a house in the village of Blonay, overlooking Lake Geneva. Unia, the union, is threatening Marchionne with harsh penalties for flouting Swiss labour laws.
According to the paper, the union spokesman said the local mayor had already asked the businessman to rectify the situation, but that all the labourers had returned to their homes in Lake Como.
Olivier Merkt, Marchionne’s lawyer, reportedly said the workmen had been “hired in the appropriate way” conforming to the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the European Union.
“The employees were paid their normal salary, according to Italian law,” he said, according to the Daily Telegraph.
