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Big Stick, Big Carrot. While he licked production bugs, Faina faced a bigger menace: Communist-dominated labor. Only eight years ago, 83% of Catini's workers voted for the Red-led Confedera-zione Generale Italo del Lavoro. Faina attacked the problem with a big stick and a big carrot. First he fired 163 Red shop stewards, then he gave Catini's workers the biggest employee welfare program in Italy: pensions, free medical care (166 doctors, 18 hospitals), low-cost housing (7,000 units), vacations and scholarships for workers' children. Working mothers got free day nurseries for their youngsters; working fathers got canteen meals for 10 lire (less than 2/): soup, pasta, meat, vegetables, half a pint of wine. But the most significant move was free stock for Catini's workers (an average of 31 shares apiece so far) with opportunity to buy more on the installment plan. Today 30,000 workers—half the payroll—are buying stock, and to encourage them to hold on to it, Faina runs a $100.ooo-a-year lottery with prizes for worker-shareholders.
Last week Faina totted up the results: in the last plant election, the Red C.G.I.L. got only 37% of the vote. In the past three years not a single hour of output was lost from labor strife. Says Faina: "We are showing our people that capitalism works."
The Next Ten Years. To keep it working, Catini keeps searching and expanding. In partnership with Gulf Oil it has struck a promising oil field in southern Abruzzi, plans to get into production as soon as a fight for control with the government petroleum monopoly is settled. In another partnership, with Fiat, it established a new nuclear subsidiary last year, expects to begin building major atomic plants in the next few years. A dozen other new plants are building for new products. Among them: steel-strong, crystalline isotactics resins (made from natural gas and petroleum derivatives) that promise to surpass even polyethylene in importance. Catini is considering options on three sites in New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio for U.S. production. Last week, as the Italian public snapped up a Montecatini stock offering that will increase the company's capital from $134 million to $160 million, Faina predicted that Italy's gross national product—which has doubled in the past ten years —would redouble in the next ten. Adds President Faina: "And Montecatini will help."