Car parts factory, Campi Bisenzio, Juni 2022
For about 11 months we have been here as an open-ended assembly,
since 9 July last year
we are here to fight for our jobs,
and also to rise up together with the wider working class community,
and together with all those who have the consciousness and the will
to improve things for everyone.
The factory has been at a standstill since that 9 July at 6am.
It's a bit like in one of those horror films
where suddenly everybody disappears due to some catastrophe.
On this Friday morning at 6am everything was left behind,
with the conviction that on Monday work would be resumed.
GKN has decided
to interrupt our work.
They have dismissed us without notice.
And we responded by coming here.
These bodyguards that the company had hired, were waiting for us.
Then at some point there were lots of us and we smashed the gate.
We sent these bodyguards away. Then the mayor came
and the police and we went in
and started an open-ended assembly.
We are in the GKN union hall,
now ex-GKN.
Here, we assembled the collective,
the trade union delegates, the works council.
We have the historic flag of the Fiom, Fiat Auto Mirafiori
because the GKN used to be Fiat.
So we are very much connected with this past.
There is a photo of Fiat from the 1950s.
So we have always been very attached to Fiat,
with its struggles and its defeats,
and from which we have tried to learn as much as possible.
This, on the other hand,
the flag of Rojava, because we are very attached to Lorenzo Orsetti,
a partisan from Florence who died in Rojava,
a short time ago, in 2018.
26 July
is the flag of the Cuban Revolution.
Because many of us are sympathisers of the 26th of July.
We generally sympathise with all impossible struggles
where the little guy challenges the giant or the established power.
And basically Cuba has always symbolised that.
Besides, here in Campi Bisenzio
we have a meeting place called Camillo Cienfuegos
and many of the workers of this factory
grew up visiting this meeting place,
which is inspired by the Cuban revolution,
as far as ideals are concerned,
and as an example of resistance and struggle, of dignity.
What killed us
was not only losing our jobs,
but that we lost our social intimacy.
On a personal level, I really received an emotional blow,
because if you need work, you find work.
But here it is the sense of community,
which I also felt with my colleagues.
Because I have a relationship with every single person.
As president, and because I have done trade union work.
I have been here 21 years,
I have had a good personal career,
not a money career, like these people, who just close up and walk away.
They are murderers, not people.
It's like from one day to the next
your whole life is taken away.
For we were and are
the classic white metal workers inside Fortress Europe
and therefore thought that the dismissal,
from one day to the next, suddently losing your salary
that this would not affect us.
Instead on this 9 July
they treated us like they treat everyone else!
A smile please!
We are organising now for our anniversary
on 9 July.
We set the team, who is there, who is not there,
what is bought, where we sell,
the plan, where to put the benches where to prepare things...
We are workers, but we are also very organised.
We do not lack strength!
How did you manage to organise yourselves so quickly,
after you got fired?
Because we rolled up our sleeves.
We already have an internal instinct.
And we are organised because we are a community.
It is true that we are divided, but within the factory
we also helped each other, talked to each other.
Therefore we can organise ourselves spontaneously.
From the beginning the local working class community responded
with great solidarity.
Also the normal passer-by, the associations, the clubs,
immediately made themselves available to help us.
There was so much solidarity, we felt a warmth,
at least personally I felt an enormous warmth,
really enormous.
Right from the start,
i don't remember whether it was 11 August?
- Earlier. - Earlier? Yes.
...we organized a demonstration in Florence,
where already a few days after the start of the assembly
about 5,000 people took part!
In such a short time a lot of people have started to follow us.
Then there was
the 18th of September
where 40,000 people participated.
And that was partly a surprise,
because it was really a sea of people.
Let us rise up, let's rise like the sun in the morning!
"Let's rise up" is the motto of the partisans,
who liberated Florence in 1944.
What kind of man are you if you don't fight?
Let us rise up, let's rise like the sun in the morning!
I am here today as the partner of a sacked worker,
as support group for the struggle of GKN,
which was created the same day this email was sent.
And I am also here as a worker, this is a demo for all of us.
We want to fight for a society,
which is organised for the workers
and not for those who exploit them.
Let's go, united, now we rise up!
We rise up!
What kind of man are you if you don't fight?
Tears came to my eyes and in fact, I hid myself,
to see 18-year-old youth
who then also gave speeches,
- I saw my son in them!
we don't record this!
My son will be 13 years old next week.
And that was really the case:
What do we leave them?
If we do nothing, what will they have?
It is like with the monuments:
Monuments of a life are still standing.
The houses of today collapse with a simple earthquake.
Obviously we are not doing a good job.
And when I saw this boy I saw my son.
Immediately since 9 July
we have tried to conduct our struggle in a different way
from the way other battles have taken place.
We have said,
that what had happened to us
was the result of an interrelated series of events,
which eventually crushed all the rights and possibilities
of the working class in this country.
And that therefore, to solve our problem,
it was necessary to to solve it fundamentally!
And so we did not tell the community:
"Let's save our jobs".
We said:
"Let us rise up together to make sure
that these processes are solved thoroughly and collectively.
How did we manage to bring 30,000 people to the streets?
We have always been a multi-relational factory.
We knew that the only defence against the company,
the financial fund, big capital, is solidarity.
That is why in all these years
we were present in all the struggles.
And we always tried to strengthen all social ties,
to be active in the eco and antifascist movements,
or even just on a basic level,
many of us were and are volunteers in Arci clubs,
in the Civil Defence, or with the Misericordia.
Some of us train the young people at football...
The fact that we succeeded to defend our free time,
against excessive exploitation, against overtime,
has led to the fact that many of us,
after the 8-hour work day, either politically and consciously,
or not directly consciously and politically
had established connections with this community.
So when the 420 workers were dismissed,
the whole community felt torn apart.
But if we have brought millions of people to the streets
it's because we made it clear,
that the problem is not our individual workplace.
We, as dismissed and unemployed workers,
were still better off than millions of freelancers, self-employed,
precarious and agency workers,
who do not even have the right to be called "dismissed".
And so we launched the motto, "Let's rise up",
to say that we have to change the power relations in the whole country
to save GKN and the whole country.
And so we had 30,000 people on the streets.
Conversion
We want a long-term project.
Not one that comes, lasts for a year,
some smoke in the eyes,
and then it dies to silence us.
We are looking for investments for a project
that is long-term. Of course, nothing is forever.
But not something that lasts a few years!
Otherwise we are back to the beginning.
Create something where maybe
our project will lead to another project
and then the circle closes, that would be even better.
What we want is that the production comes back
along with all the rights that we had.
Because we defend a workplace as a place of production,
but also as a wealth of comprehensive rights.
Because we obtained our rights in almost 15 years of struggles.
We even inherit agreements and rights
from the 1970s and the 1960s.
Even some rights that were taken from us on a national level,
such as article 18 of the Italian Workers' Statute.
We have an agreement here that this one continues to apply.
And at the moment they dismissed us
saying that the ecological transition was to blame for our dismissal,
because the car industry is moving towards the ecological transition,
we refused to be held socially responsible
for that ecological transition.
Because the ecological transition must be paid, socially speaking,
by the big producers, by big capital
and certainly not by the workplaces.
When I was hired they didn't ask me what I would like to produce.
They hired me and that was it.
At first, when GKN fled,
together with the students of the University of Pisa
we developed two projects:
One concerned drive shafts for public transport,
and the second to produce hydrogen,
a gas which is completely clean,
which electric cars are certainly not.
So if we could choose, then we would like to convert
and be integrated into Italian bus production,
an industry which is public, which produces buses.
We believe that this would be the only real ecological and sustainable mobility.
Buses or other public transport.
We don't have that choice.
The current owner wants to convert us to electric motors.
Pity that for the production of electric motors
the whole plant has to become an empty box,
in order to then bring a different production.
So now we have a factory
that needs to be turned into an empty box
before the new production arrives.
As soon as we are an empty box
they will try to smash us.
So we are trying to bring about this re-industrialisation,
keeping the struggle alive
and with guarantees. Not easy,
because the industrialisation of a factory takes 2, 3 years.
And 2, 3 years is a long time.
And probably it is all calculated.
They promise us something that will happen in 3 years.
And we may never get there.
Since these investors do not budge
because there are allegedly problems with the stock exchange or whatever,
we are waiting for something else to develop.
In the meantime we continue to rise up,
we continue to maintain the level of internal self-organization
and at the same time
we keep the material.
Which the GKN absolutely wants back.
All the material must still stay in here.
The GKN Factory Collective
About ten years ago we decided
to meet at a club in the neighbourhood,
and from there we organised this collective.
We formed the first group, for which almost everyone had signed up
and every now and then we met each other
and talked about the problems in the factory.
We did that in such a way that also those
who did not take part in the union work in the factory,
or who were in another trade union
were able to participate.
A system to bring everyone together.
From the most militant to the most indifferent.
There was quite a positive response.
And that helped us.
Firstly, to keep us up to date
about everything that was happening,
also about the problems of the individual people.
But also to show to the boss
that he is not completely -
how can I say that? -
that he was not completely
the boss of everything.
They then reacted by creating positions
like "the OS operator" or "the Q operator",
to try and divide us a little bit.
- He did not succeed.
Also in this case, because of course
it was based on favouritism.
He therefore did nothing other than to bring many more people to our side.
We have reacted to this in a special way,
with merchandising, with clothing.
We have started to wear scarves
with the inscription "Factory Collective".
The workers who entered the factory with this scarve,
showed the boss,
that they belonged to us.
It was a very positive response.
And then we slowly made it,
to meet in the union hall after work, after the shift,
once a week,
to meet with the members of the collective or in smaller groups.
And in these collectives we decided what to do.
Both the internal activities of the union, as well as external,
to go out and bring solidarity and support to companies
who were in struggle, for example Texprint,
which was one of the companies that brought a lot of solidarity
on the ground with them.
Then also the Bekaert. We were also at the Bekaert.
- This is how our activity started.
Probably hundreds of workers have been here,
who have contributed to the organisation of the collective
without knowing it.
Because we come from Fiat,
so we know the stories of the old Fiat workers
about what it was like in the factory.
They explained how and why
more or less parts should be made with the machine,
how to deal in everyday life
with the boss and the management.
These workers, which many of us
had got to know in the 80s and 90s,
had also gradually been corrupted
by a bureaucratic conception of trade unionism.
We didn't inherit this from them.
When in 2007/08 there was a fierce conflict
with the classical trade union organisation,
suddenly workers, who until then
had not been active in the union
but were interested in football or in going out dancing,
were forced to organise the union themselves.
And they find that to say no to something,
to have a stomach ache, to say no to organisation...
I'll stop...
What is this?
This is the shift bell that's still ringing.
If you want to record it...
When in 2007/08 there is a break with the official trade union organisation,
the internal union is taken over
by workers, who up to this point
were not unionised, who were interested in
in soccer or dancing. They knew what they didn't want.
They did not want
the old, bureaucratised and moderate trade union organisation,
and they discovered that it was difficult,
to realise a trade union model
based on the participation and consciousness of the workers,
which in the end is the only model that can save us.
In our opinion the most important thing
is to overcome the concept of representation
which makes the worker passive,
while the worker has to be active in the decisions
and must take his fate in his own hands.
Between 2007/08 and 2018
there were constant strikes and fights,
many agreements were fought for.
But there was always a struggle that was very hard, very radical.
This was a factory where
when we whistled...
This is a factory,
where, when we whistled,
the workers immediately went on strike.
Often we went on strike, even without explaining to the workers why,
maybe because of a sudden event.
Then we went through the rows, whistled, everybody walked out.
There was this degree of cohesion,
but there was no awareness and no involvement.
So there was a great trust
towards 2, 3, 4 elements,
but these elements could not do everything on their own.
Could not and cannot.
Then, little by little,
we tried to create more and more models for participation.
When then the Melrose Financial Fund came in 2018
we realised that this was probably our last big challenge.
So we started to stress the topic of participation.
That is where the factory collective came into being.
We started to make it clear that trade union work
does not only mean being in the works council,
or being a member a trade union.
But that it is about participation,
which consists of voluntary work, militancy, activism.
And all this then, when we were suddenly closed down
paid off.
Because if we hadn't had this participatory model,
we would not have been able to resist for so many months.
The other element of our trade union organisation
was openness. Openness to outsiders,
to those we call "the Solidarians".
For example, in 2018 we already had an external support group.
So if there were graphic designers, workers from other sectors
or comrades from the social centres,
from left organisations who wanted to help us,
there was the support group.
And from the support group we needed everything:
From social media to graphics, everything.
Everything that we we couldn't do internally.
Looking from abroad: How can people
support this struggle or become part of it?
(Because we come from Germany.)
Unfortunately we had no time to be internationalists.
Although we are.
We just didn't have the time.
Because the truth is:
The international trade union and inter-union links
are often the most difficult.
Also because they have the most bureaucratic constraints.
We tried to set our issue within the European Works Council,
the "International Works Council"
but we found ourselves up against a brick wall.
There were of course statements of solidarity
from the international trade unions,
absolutely.
But this is never translated into a practice.
At most a few consultations in Brussels.
But it leads to nothing.
So although we had no time to be internationalists
although we are,
what we can start trying,
which, by the way, you are doing right now,
is to translate the material that we have,
and to explain this struggle in other languages.
Which we have not yet had the time to do.
At the moment unfortunately
we can't do any other concrete practical actions.
We are busy
with trying to rise up in Italy,
not because we think it's possible to stand up on our own in Italy,
but because we hope that news will come
of a swelling battle,
- in the future also in the other countries, Europe and beyond.