The evolution of a steel plant and its impact on the social context: the case of Taranto

Introduction

In the early 1960s, as part of Italy’s national strategy to industrialize the underdeveloped South, Taranto was chosen as the site for a massive state-owned steel plant. The city was not new to industrial and military infrastructure — it hosted one of Italy’s main naval arsenals — but the arrival of the ILVA steel plant, built under the control of Italsider and the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI) marked a transformative rupture.

From 1965, when it was created, to 1975, the plant expanded dramatically, reshaping Taranto’s economy, urban layout, and social structure. Thousands of workers migrated from other southern regions to find employment, and a new working-class neighbourhood, Tamburi, emerged in the shadow of the factory.

Initially, the plant was perceived as a tool of national rebirth. It promised to turn the city into a “southern capital of steel”, reduce unemployment, and close the North-South divide — key ambitions of the Italian state’s post-war modernization project. However, little consideration was given to environmental impact, long-term economic sustainability, or local participation in the decision-making process.

Between development and dependence

The steel plant fostered an intense economic dependency. By the 1970s, it directly employed over 20,000 workers and thousands more through subcontractors. The urban infrastructure grew chaotically around the plant, often ignoring safety and health criteria. Meanwhile, economic policies favoured ILVA at the expense of agriculture, fishing, and tourism. 

A process of mono-industrialization began: public institutions, trade unions, and the media converged around the dominant narrative that “ILVA is the city”. This discouraged plural economic development and amplified citizens’ vulnerability to corporate and political power, demonstrating how the Taranto case represents a classic example of top-down development, where the benefits of industrial growth were prioritized over democratic engagement, ecological sustainability, and long-term well-being.

Labour mobilization and the “Taranto Dispute”

Despite its “benefits”, ILVA quickly became a site of conflict. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, workers organized protests and strikes to denounce hazardous conditions, exploitative subcontracting, and lack of transparency. What emerged was the so-called “Taranto Dispute” — a complex, multi-year mobilization that united workers, students, local activists, and parts of the clergy. The dispute culminated in historic agreements signed in 1974 and 1975, which introduced key safeguards such as: limiting toxic exposure through rotating duties, monitoring emissions and increasing workers' control over safety protocols.

These agreements were significant not only for their substance but because they framed the struggle in terms of social justice and participatory democracy — anticipating modern discourses on corporate social responsibility and environmental justice.

The movement revealed a growing political consciousness within the labour force: industrial development was no longer acceptable at any cost. Workers demanded a voice in shaping the city's future and managing industrial risk.

Privatization and the collapse of a social model

The 1990s brought a major shift with the privatization of ILVA, sold to the Riva Group, a private family-owned firm with no public accountability. Privatization was part of a broader neoliberal agenda that redefined the role of the state, dismantling public industry across Europe.

The Riva Group cut thousands of jobs, replaced permanent contracts with precarious ones, and repressed union activity. One emblematic episode was the “Palazzina Laf” case, where workers who refused unjust demotions were confined in a segregated building without assignments — a practice later condemned by courts as “collective mobbing”.

Taranto became a laboratory of deregulated capitalism where the logic of profit replaced the previous social contract. The sense of community between workers, institutions, and the industry broke down. With weakened unions and politically compromised institutions, citizens found it increasingly difficult to demand accountability.

Environmental injustice and the fight for health

In the 2000s, the environmental costs of ILVA’s operations could no longer be ignored. Data from the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection (ARPA) and the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) showed that Taranto had the highest concentration of dioxins in Western Europe.

A 2012 judicial investigation led to the seizure of the “high heat area” (where the actual steel production takes place) for environmental crimes, citing “permanent and serious environmental and health damage”. This event marked a turning point as it triggered a social, political and constitutional crisis which persists today. In the following years, the Italian government then intervened with special decrees (the so-called “Salva-Ilva”) that suspended legal action (thus starting a conflict against the judiciary) and maintained industrial operations, showing indifference to citizens' health and workers' safety — given the factory’s dilapidated and hazardous conditions — while prioritizing only its own economic interests.

In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights  condemned Italy in the case Cordella and Others v. Italy for violating the rights of residents living near the ILVA steel plant in Taranto. The Court found a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to respect for private and family life, due to the state’s failure to prevent environmental pollution that endangered public health. It also found a violation of Article 13, which guarantees the right to an effective remedy, as citizens lacked adequate legal means to challenge the ongoing environmental harm.

The judgment highlighted how Italian authorities prioritized industrial production over the health and safety of the population, failing to take necessary measures despite clear evidence of risk. As a result, environmental injustice in Taranto was formally recognized as a human rights issue and as a failure of the state to protect citizens from preventable harm.

Fractured identities and political disillusionment

Beyond material damage, ILVA profoundly altered Taranto’s social fabric. Once a symbol of national pride, the plant became associated with sacrifice, and betrayal. Generations grew up in its shadow, often forced to choose between jobs and health, or between speaking out and keeping silent.

A 1990 study made by the Regional Centre for Educational and Cultural Services (CRSEC) documented widespread social fragmentation and civic disengagement in the city. The report highlighted how the dominance of the ILVA steel plant had not only shaped the local economy but also deeply influenced the social fabric, leading to a weakening of community bonds and a decline in participatory civic life, with the absence of democratic spaces.

Indeed, especially starting from the 1990s, as traditional institutions like political parties and trade unions lost credibility in addressing environmental and social issues, populist movements began to fill the void, offering simplistic solutions that resonated with public frustrations. This shift contributed to a political landscape where short-term appeals overshadowed long-term structural reforms, where promises of “modernity” were never fulfilled, and where the local community continued to be excluded from shaping their destiny.

Conclusion

Despite its history, today Taranto is a city that must look to the future. Civil society organizations, together with local associations, have already been trying in recent years to actively push for a new paradigm rooted in transitional justice—a framework traditionally used in post-conflict societies, but increasingly applied to contexts of long-term structural harm. In this case, transitional justice means acknowledging the damage caused by decades of industrial pollution, recognizing the rights of affected communities, and pursuing policies aimed at remediation, accountability, and recovery.

This approach involves more than just technical fixes. It requires an inclusive and participatory process that empowers civil society, citizens — particularly those living near the factory, who are therefore more vulnerable and marginalized — workers, and students or researchers who are genuinely concerned about Taranto’s future.  Such a collective effort would be vital to defining the revolutionary path that Taranto will inevitably have to undertake — one built on repairing the environmental harm, with a focus on contaminated areas, retraining workers for sustainable sectors, democratizing economic and environmental policies, and restoring the local community’s trust.

Taranto could also become a pilot case for the implementation of the European Green Deal, through instruments such as the Just Transition Fund, while ensuring that an eventual transition does not repeat the injustices of the past, which holds valuable lessons for the entire “Mezzogiorno” (Southern Italy) and for other communities historically facing the legacies of industrial monoculture.

Thus, only by placing justice — ecological, social, and intergenerational — at the centre will it truly be possible to build a just and dignified future for Taranto.