On his first day as general director of Whirlpool Slovakias new washing machine plant 10 years ago, Errico Biondi stepped out of his office in the mid-afternoon to find that everyone had gone.
“I just couldnt understand why there was no one around when it was only 3:00 pm,” the Italian native said in a recent interview ahead of Slovakia’s admission to the European Union on May 1.
It is one of ten mostly former communist states that will make up the biggest enlargement in EU history.
A lot has since changed at the factory. In the 12 years since Whirlpool, which considers itself a global company, first invested at the site, annual production of washing machines has risen almost 20-fold from less than 100,000 units in May 1992 to the 1.8 million units expected to be produced this year.
Now, “people are willing to stay late if necessary and have learned that they have to work with stress so that we can meet deadlines,” Biondi said.
It is now Whirpool’s largest European plant and, said Biondi, boasts the most flexible workforce of its European operations.
The factory in eastern Poprad, a small town of 55,000 people, has even taken production of some lines away from plants in Italy, France and Germany.
Two years ago production of washing machines was switched here from the domestic appliances plant in the northern French city of Amiens, with the loss of 265 French jobs.
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