Employees at Italy’s largest stainless steel plant blocked the motorway between Milan and Naples for several hours on Thursday.<br /><br />The A1 is the most important main road in Italy.<br /><br />Workers are angry at plans by German owners ThyssenKrupp to cut around 550 jobs and halve production.<br /><br />The stainless steel plant in Terni in central Italy is one of the most modern in Europe, but has been making losses for several years.<br /><br />ThyssenKrupp blames it on the poor state of the market and structural oversupply.<br /><br />It wants to save 100 million euros in annual costs and says that if it doesn’t succeed it will close one of the furnaces at the site in 2016.<br /><br />Italy is Europe’s second-largest steel producer after Germany.
