FLORENCE: Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Sunday met workers from German industrial group ThyssenKrupp's Italian stainless steel plant, where 550 jobs are due to be cut.
A day earlier an estimated one million people attended a rally in Rome to protest against Renzi's labour reform plans, which aim to make hiring and firing easier.
Around 70 workers from the loss-making Acciai Speciali Terni (AST) plant in central Italy demonstrated outside a meeting in Florence where Renzi met with five workers.
ThyssenKrupp, which is trying to sell AST and get out of the stainless steel business, said in early October it had started procedures to cut the jobs after talks between labour unions and the company broke down.
A representative for the workers, who have been on strike to persuade ThyssenKrupp to change its industrial plan, said Renzi undertook personally on Sunday to help reach a solution quickly.
"The unions and the workers are ready to make sacrifices, but these need to be repaid with an industrial plan that ensures continued production at the plant," a union representative said after the meeting.
ThyssenKrupp officials are due to meet Economy Minister Federica Guidi on Wednesday to discuss Terni, an important employer in the Umbria region which has changed hands twice in the past four years.
Labour Minister Giuliano Poletti told reporters the government would do everything it could to solve the problem.
The global stainless steel market has been squeezed by overcapacity and the Italian steel industry, Europe's second largest after Germany, is struggling with weak demand in an economy which has shrunk by about 9 percent since 2007.
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