Ronaldo signing prompts Fiat factory strike

Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo made global headlines in July with a shift from Spain’s Real Madrid to Italy’s Juventus for a tidy €100 million ($158.5m) transfer fee. 

While many sports fans in Turin celebrated the move, workers at Fiat’s Melfi factory plan to go on strike in protest of the sums spent to attract one of the world’s best players.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the Juventus football club are both part-owned by Italy’s Agnelli family, which also has a major stake in Ferrari.

While the club and carmaker are managed as seperate entities, FCA’s Jeep is the major sponsor for Juventus, and employees at the Italian plant responsible for constructing the Jeep Renegade are unhappy at the numbers involved in Ronaldo’s transfer.

The Guardian reports Ronaldo will be paid £500,000 ($895,000) per week at Juventus, and that the total cost of the deal including transfer fees and taxes is around £340m ($609m).

Reaction to the move has been mixed. Italy’s Gazzetta Dello Sport described Ronaldo’s switch as "the coup of the century"

A spokesman for a workers’ union at the Jeep plant said “It’s unacceptable that, while FCA and CNHI workers continue to make huge economic sacrifices, the company spends hundreds of millions of euros on the purchase of a player”.

FCA and Exor, the Angelli family’s holding company, declined to comment on the strike according to Reuters.