Private welfare for workers. Corporate welfare at Fiat in the era of Vittorio Valletta (1946-1966)

Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino) was for a good part of the twentieth century Italy’s largest industrial company. Historians and sociologists have extensively investigated its productive expansion in the automotive industry, as well as the leading role it played in introducing and applying Taylorist and Fordist techniques of mass production to the Italian manufacturing sector. The analysis of the organization of the social policies that the company established for its employees from the 1920s onward has been, however, less considered. Yet, the complex of welfare, recreational and cultural services made available to workers was so pervasive that it seems interesting to reconstruct its history and assess the impact it had on the lives of employees. It can be argued that the corporate welfare made up by the Turin company during the years when Vittorio Valletta led it (1946–1966) was an integral element of the Fordist model of mass production, aimed not only to counterbalance the strain of assembly line work with social benefits, but also to replicate in daily life the regimentation that office and factory workers experienced in the hours they spent in the mills.