Welcome to our event
to the struggle of the factory collective Collettivo di fabbrica GKN from Florence.
I am personally very happy
and also a bit excited because actually six of the comrades
from Florence have made it, in a night and fog action
to come here to Germany to report on their struggle.
And they are here
as representatives of the collective, to report on their struggle.
And I'm very pleased to be here this evening.
I'm Julia.
I'm active in Leipzig only visiting Berlin,
and actually active mainly in the SDS and in the climate movement in Leipzig.
And I want to tell you very briefly in a few sentences how it came about
that the comrades from Florence are speaking here today.
Large parts of the climate movement have been convinced of this for a long time,
and I think a lot of people share this idea,
that in view of the ecological crisis
we need a big mass uprising and of course we would have to go into the factories
and paralyse everything and have a lot of alliances
between workers and climate activists.
I have had many debates about this in the last few years
and often the argument came up:
"That's all well and good." - you see it already here behind us -
"Between public transport colleagues and climate activists it may be.
But when we think of the coal and car industries and so on,
then it's an illusion that we could now, could soon build strong alliances
between car workers and climate activists."
And then there was usually little else to say than:
"Yes, it has to work.
In the 1980s there were also conversion movements
and there were also women workers fighting for a different production."
And then suddenly this fight of the Collettivo di fabbrica
fell from the sky, for me at least,
and a couple of people who are also here today,
for example Lukas, the interpreter, Franzi, who is sitting here in the front,
or the people from labournet.tv who made a super great documentary,
they went to Italy and found out,
that there is a workforce there who should actually be dismissed
and has established a permanent assembly in the factory for one year and a half
and is fighting so they will not be dismissed,
but that all > the machines, the robots,
everything that is there, is finally being used,
so that something useful can be produced.
In discussion are for example Buses, parts for buses,
cargo bikes are a hot topic in the discussion.
Other ideas are photovoltaic systems and the colleagues from down there,
from Florence want to produce something else.
And this fight was watched by a few people here in Germany.
And for a long time there had been the idea to bring the comrades here.
And now they have actually come.
And I am happy about it.
And so today we mainly want to give you time
to tell about your struggle.
Maybe you already know a little bit, maybe not.
In any case, we want to hear for about half an hour:
What is it with you guys in this factory?
How is it possible that you're fighting such an extremely offensive struggle
and to what extent have you actually
collaborated with Fridays for Future in Italy?
How can we support at the moment?
These are the questions we asked them in advance,
but we don't just want to -
and that is of course a political decision -
not only listen to the GKN colleagues,
who say, "Here in Italy everything is great and we are leading
a super fight",
and then we can all keep our feet still,
but we also want to hear
what the situation in Germany is right now, in order to be able to tie in with it.
And that's why we have two climate activists sitting here,
who are going to follow up on this.
And first we have Daria, one of the speakers from Fridays for Future
and she's going to talk about where we are at the moment with FFF.
Interesting in that regard is,
and this is of course of interest the comrades from Italy,
what is the state of Fridays for Future in Germany right now?
What did we see yesterday for climate strikes?
Are these issues of production or alliances of workers
and climate activists here in Germany an issue or not?
And what the colleagues, comrades from Italy find interesting
above all is, I think, what is happening in Lützerath.
The way we look at this conversion debate in Italy,
they say they are totally captivated by it, what's happening in Lützerath, for example.
We will hear a bit about that.
Welcome to you, too.
And thirdly, Franzi will tell you something about what you see on the left of the picture.
Yesterday was a pretty special climate strike, because in many cities
public transport workers and climate activists went on strike together.
And that these pictures - you might have seen it in the press,
on some YouTube channels - that this collaboration came about,
that is also the result of months, actually years of work
and not just somehow a nice coincidence.
Franzi is in the core group of these very projects.
"We ride together" is the name of the campaign and she will talk a little bit about it.
Because in Leipzig for example, we had a climate strike,
that was for me personally completely crazy,
with a lot of climate activists,
striking public transport colleagues and the comrades from Florence.
And it was such a small socialist dream for one day,
that everybody was standing there united
and we want to hear a little bit,
what's the potential there, what's the next step?
With this I hand over the the floor to both of you.
Thank you to the interpreters.
Thanks to all
for this invitation and this meeting
which, of course, for us
is important and touching.
It was not easy, but we are here.
And it won't be be easy for me
to try to sum up twenty months, to sum up twenty months of struggle.
Also because these twenty months would have to be explained
with all that happened before,
that prepared us for these twenty months of struggle.
But there is one thing I want to say right away:
We have not started our struggle
by talking about environmental protection.
We have not started our struggle
by talking about convergence and about the need to combine
the struggles of the workers and the environmental movement.
But we have learned through our experiences,
that both are necessary.
Our attitude is therefore not the result
of a certain pre-existing ideological attitude
- which wouldn't be wrong -
instead, our current attitude is
the result of everything we have done,
and will have to do to save our jobs.
Meaning,
the connection between the environmental movement
and the workers' movement
is not just an abstract necessity
- which it also is -
but a practical necessity.
It is the only possibility that we have as workers
to actually defend our rights,
our jobs and our wages.
So there is not the economic struggle of the workers' movement,
which then at some point through a strange altruism
becomes an environmental movement.
There is only one struggle.
For life, understood as a harmonious capacity
to live from one's own wages with one's own rights, one's own time.
Life is the air we breathe,
life is the territory that we cross,
life is the ability of the people,
to defend their jobs, but also to decide:
Who benefits your work?
What world will it leave behind?
In which world does it take place?
In 2018, the GKN Group was was bought by a financial fund, Melrose,
whose motto is not very secret:
"Buy, improve, sell"
"Buy, Improve and sell"
means to restructure, close down, make redundancies to increase profits.
In 2021 Melrose made a loss of
100 million.
2022 it has made a profit of 300.
It closed GKN Florence,
it closed GKN Birmingham
and other factories of the aviation industry,
it closed GKN Kaiserslautern
and announced the closure of GKN Mosel announced.
But we are not here to cry
and to say that this is a shame or to be indignant.
They did their job well
because that is their job.
You cannot at the same time accept the financial system
and weep about lay-offs.
If you accept the financial system it is inevitable
that one has to accept that factories are closed by the click of a mouse
or with an e-mail, as it happened to us,
on behalf of the shareholders.
As the financial fund comes in in 2018, we resolve
that we must need to prepare
and we try to accelerate our organising,
which is the result of a mixture
of everything we inherited from the 1970s,
because GKN Florence was the old Fiat,
by young people who came into the factory,
and tried make the union a reality in a different way,
up to the attempt
to build a democratic and militant union model,
with the foundation of the factory collective 2018
and the introduction of the factory delegates.
Because the point is that we not only went on strike,
and enforced rights, wages and contracts.
We also said to ourselves: If we don't expand
our ability to control the factory,
one day all the agreements that we had signed,
will be null and void.
Because this is a rigged game.
We are striking and fighting to get contracts,
and they defy agreements at an opportune moment.
And even if you are in the right, it is too late,
because in the meantime the factory has already been closed.
On 9 July 2021, it was a Friday, they say we should stay at home
for a day off, because there is little work.
In the morning we receive an e-mail,
saying that we're all fired,
that we won't enter the factory any more.
Obviously also a form of psychological violence.
We gathered in front of these gates,
because we had prepared for this case for a long time.
The gates were closed, there were armed guards inside,
defending the factory.
We went in, took back the factory
and since 9 July 2021 we are in a permanent assembly.
Some things we had prepared
Some things we had prepared, others we had not.
At this point in time we had 75 days,
to prevent the dismissal from becoming final.
And these 75 days they had chosen on purpose
in July and in August.
First we say "GKN stays!".
Then we realise that this slogan might not mean anything.
We live in a country, Italy -
but the problem is European and international -
where at the moment of our release
we lost a million jobs during the pandemic.
In our country the number of the poor rised from 1.5 million in 2009
to 5.6 million in 2021.
That means that the number of absolute poor has tripled.
Then there are the relative poor.
We have 3.5 million precarious people
who from one day to the next had been left at home
as it happened to us.
What does "GKN stays" mean to all these people?
Why should GKN stay?
So we say something different.
After two days we say: "Let's get up!"
which is a motto of the resistance of the partisans,
to indicate that we have a dark period behind us
and that this time would only pass if everyone decided
that a limit had been reached.
If our struggle became a symbol of social resistance for all,
so that by winning at GKN we would win for all
and set a favourable precedent for all.
These 75 days pass very quickly,
we organise three very big demonstrations and a general strike
and we manage to prevent the dismissals.
With a demonstration on 18 September 2021
with 40,000 people in Florence,
as well as with a successful lawsuit,
declaring the dismissals to be unlawful.
So we defeat the summary dismissals.
But the work does not come back.
We remain in the empty factory which does not start again,
although we are not fired.
And from there on time suddenly slows down.
They leave us there in the factory.
We don't know when the lay-offs will come back.
Since we had 75 days in which thousands of people defended us,
we now have time
to develop a convergence with other social mobilisations.
We ask ourselves how we use this time.
We travel to the Climate Camp to Milan in September,
where there was a demonstration with as many thousands of people,
organised by Fridays For Future
and we tell them something simple:
Don't think that we are defending the car industry
against the ecological turnaround.
That's not what it is.
We were not asked what to produce
when they hired us
and we don't want to be held responsible
for something we no longer produce when we are made redundant.
If we are held responsible for what we produce,
then we want to decide what, for whom and how much we produce.
And we declare that an axle shaft factory like ours
can be integrated into the public bus production
for sustainable mobility,
to produce electric buses.
To keep the factories that the private car industry is abandoning,
to instead create a production
- the only really sustainable one - of public transport,
which are environmentally friendly, electric and free,
that actually make our mobility public and sustainable.
Of course we know that the state intervention,
that we are asking for does not exist and they will not give it to us.
Because there is no opposition between the Italian state
and the multinational companies.
There is, if anything, the attempt of the state,
to position itself at the disposal of multinational companies
to gently close down the factories.
The multinational companies close you down with a mail,
while they close you with endless round tables,
leading to the same result in the end.
over the years and with public money,
not to get the factories to get going again,
but to give us social plans and unemployment benefits,
to keep us there, so we don't do anything,
until we resign ourselves.
So when we speak of public intervention
we connect with researchers and solidary people
and in December 2021
we call a meeting at the factory,
where we present our plan for sustainable mobility.
And on this basis we demand an intervention of the state.
At the same time we say that if Melrose resumes the dismissals
we are ready to mobilise again.
At this very moment, when we are talking about public intervention
the consultant from GKN shows up
and says that he buys GKN Florence,
to stop the redundancies.
So there is another victory,
because we are bought by this entrepreneur who says:
I withdraw the dismissals and the liquidation of the factory.
I will bring you an investor.
For he has neither capital nor a new product.
We have a strong doubt whether this promise of the investors
is designed to buy time to wear us down further.
Because obviously a social mobilisation
cannot last indefinitely.
The solidarity movement around us is relaxing
and goes home.
The only possibility we have,
to see whether this investor actually arrives
is to increase the convergence even further.
Which is why we call to a nationwide demo
in Florence on 26 March.
Together with the Climate Strike of 25 March,
- so the convergence deepens -
and say that we did not fight FOR THIS [for our factory],
but FOR OTHERS, in solidarity with other mobilisations,
and FOR EVERYTHING, for a connection
between our struggle and struggles like that for the environment,
against the invasion of Ukraine and the worldwide escalation of war,
the anti-fascist struggles the struggles against patriarchy.
Of course they attack us for that because they say
GKN does politics instead of trade union work.
But that was the only way to stand our ground,
to secure our existence also on the trade union front.
The months go by,
and still no investor,
round tables, promises and the factory continues to stand still,
At the end of August
it is finally clear that no investor will come.
But we had signed an agreement with the new owner
which said that if the investor doesn't come
and it becomes clear that the new owner
was just another face of the financial fund,
who plays the same game by continuing to stall us,
he had to become the owner of the factory.
He presents a business plan for 50 million euros,
of which, however, 35 would be contributed by the Italian state.
The public intervention that we had demanded from the beginning
is now demanded by a private entrepreneur to socialise the losses,
in order to use the public funds in his favour
and not in our favour.
In fact, he doesn't intend even to ask for these funds,
because he does not even submit the relevant documents to the state.
The investments do not arrive, the factory does not restart.
At this point we appoint again our solidary
technical-scientific committee
and declare ourselves a public and socially integrated factory.
Public factory, because GKN cannot restart,
if there is no public intervention,
socially integrated, because this factory, our factory,
has been defended from the whole territory
by the whole GKN Solidarity Movement
and it is true that the factory belongs to this movement.
So our factory is not only public, in the sense of being nationalised,
but it must be socially integrated,
i.e. it must really be in the hands of the communities and territories
with a participatory democracy from below that decides
what the factory should produce.
Also a guarantee that the factory will produce things tomorrow,
that are actually ecologically and socially sustainable
and won't be another part
of the capitalist Green Washing.
This step and the fact that in November
we are founding a society for mutual aid
and that we call for two more demonstrations -
one in Bologna against the widening of the urban motorway,
together with the suburbs of Bologna.
We workers, who produce private cars, who, together with the suburbs,
protest against the enlargement of a road,
which serves the road traffic, private individual traffic,
instead of producing public transport vehicles.
Our suburbs, where the average life expectancy
is on average four years lower than that of the residents in the centre.
So it is the difference that we pay as proletarians,
as workers in terms of life,
that we will have, because of our choices,
in relation to the environment, where we live, where we can stay.
And on 5 November we call for another mobilisation
with the unemployed in Naples, in order to create a link
between the workers in the centre and in the north,
and the unemployed in Naples.
Because there is this paradox:
if you are unemployed here they insult you,
because you want an income to survive.
Us, who would like to work again,
they give us an income so that we don't go to work.
All this leads to an even greater attack on property,
and when they realise that they can't wear us down,
because the permanent assembly continues,
also thanks to the convergence with all the social struggles,
they start with a tactic which we have called siege in November.
Just like in a medieval siege
you have to burn the earth around the besieged.
They start to slander and say,
that they don't know who is behind this factory,
perhaps a subversive minority,
that wants to start its own political movement,
that frightens investors.
And on top of that you have to
starve the besieged.
That is why in November they stop paying us wages.
Now we have been without without wages for six months.
And with the wages they stop paying us all this
that is tied to the wage: Social security contributions, parental leave,
breastfeeding periods.
To force the workers to resign,
because they are putting us in a kind of hostage situation,
where we are not unemployed and we can't get benefits,
because we are workers, - nobody has made us redundant -
but we have no wages!
To get a salary I would have to quit
and start as a precarious in another company.
It has been going on like this for five, six months now.
And the most frightening thing, most disturbing thing is,
that we have often heard stories from comrades in arms,
often from migrants who work in small textile workshops
in our neighbourhood, or in logistics, where they do illicit work,
where the companies are in the hands of the Mafia, the Camorra, the Ndrangheta,
where you have no contractual rights.
But we have contractual rights which have been acquired over 60 years of struggle.
They took them away from us from one day to the next,
under the spotlight of the Italian state.
Because every week we go to the Ministries, to the negotiations.
And nobody is shocked that we are not being paid!
To show to what extent we are impersonal numbers
we are in ministerial negotiations and tell them:
"You are not paying, it's illegal!"
- and what they want to talk about is our permanent assembly
and why we are in the factory.
Although we are naturally very tired and bent
from this whole tactic
and from twenty months of struggle
we have launched an industrial project:
The scientific and technical Solidarity Committee has,
together with our Re-Industrialisation Group,
worked day and night
and today we see this reality:
We have industrial projects, we have a product, the prototype of a cargo bike.
We would have the possibility to produce renewable energy
because we have start-ups on our side
with interesting patents that could enable us to do that,
e.g. producing photovoltaic panels without extractivism,
namely without using silicon, lithium or cobalt,
and by joining the environmental movement,
which should help us in this transition so as not to fall into green washing,
not to delude ourselves into thinking that we are doing something ecological when that is not true.
That is why we are thinking about starting again as a cooperative.
We are thinking about starting with a corporate structure,
or a union structure,
where social movements acquire shares in the factory
and can control what happens in the factory.
Of course we don't cherish to illusions.
The factory we are going to restart is a capitalist factory.
And we know from the history of the cooperative movement:
You are still an island
in a capitalism that brings you to self-exploitation.
So we know that we are going down a very dangerous path.
But we also know that we have no alternatives,
because on the one hand we have created a new collective imaginary,
we have changed the power relations
but unfortunately the balance of power today is still insufficient
to change the overall picture.
This leads to the fact that our experience
resembles that of the occupied factories in Argentina,
with some positive and some negative differences.
So we have the possibility
to create a little social experiment
being aware that the socialist factory does not exist
and that the new system won't be made in a single factory,
we are absolutely aware of that.
But we can go this way and turn GKN into
a little social experiment
if the whole movement accompanies us
through all the phases that we will pass through:
In the phase of mobilisation, because mobilisation is not over.
In the propaganda phase of what is happening at GKN
because we have to let people know what we are doing.
And in the crowdfunding phase,
because obviously we need money.
On the one hand to cope with the lack of wages
and on the other hand to make the investments
that fund the new production.
Unfortunately, for this kind of production we need completely different machines.
It will no longer be the production of axle shafts for cars
but we will, and that will cost money,
have to order completely new machinery
and start with the new production.
What for us is an honour, a burden, an effort,
is the banal attempt to keep the wages and and the jobs,
because that is what we are fighting for.
Today we are forced, not because of ideological convictions
but because of the way our struggle has developed,
to restart as a European social experiment
where not only we, but all of you can say
that we not only have the best ideas
and fight for a different future,
but that there is also a small village -
we jokingly call ourselves the village of Asterix and Obelix.
When the whole Roman Empire was conquered,
there was a small village that still resists.
There is a small village of madmen
in which we are able
to challenge the concepts of the capitalists
in an effective, productive way
with a really progressive production,
of course only,
when there is a whole movement around this village
that defends it, helps it and move it forward.
In the last five minutes, if I may,
some more general considerations.
Every time during these five months
when we travelled through Italy, and now not only Italy,
we found ourselves confronted
with the peasants,
with the textile workers,
with those who work in animal husbandry.
Each time one sentence stood out:
every time we came into contact with an industry they said:
"You don't know, but that
is the most polluting industry there is."
"Intensive agriculture is the most polluting there is."
"You don't know it, but factory farming
is the most polluting industry!"
"You don't know it, but the textile production
is one of the most polluting industries."
"You don't know but
behind the production of the COIN there is an enormous amount of pollution."
"Behind the digital there is an enormous amount of pollution."
The truth is
that the capitalist industry as a whole
as it is organised today
as a whole is harmful to the environment.
We can imagine the ecological transition
not simply as a technical innovation.
Because there is more than just technology.
Technology renews itself through people whom technology renews.
And technology does not renew itself if there is no other social organisation.
There can be no ecological transition
if there are no communities of solidarity who know what they are talking about.
And there can be no communities of solidarity
in hierarchical power and in exploitation.
So the truth is, as we have often said,
and not only us:
You cannot fight against the end of the world
if you don't make it by the end of the month.
You can't expect while millions of people
are sinking into poverty, into extortion, in the exploitation of the precariat,
at the same time a mass environmental movement can develop,
which succeeds in preventing the end of the world.
Because inside the production plants we must have our people,
who know how the production can be transformed
and who explain to us how much and why this industry pollutes the environment,
how much and why this value chain
is organised in a way that is harmful to the environment
in order to achieve maximum profit.
But at work we can't have that,
when we are threatened by redundancies, threatened by the precariat
as in the case of millions of others, of low wages, of inflation.
If we have to choose between paying the bills or the rent
and at the same time we can't care whether the bills are right,
we can't care about the war, which inflates them,
about the natural gas, which is part of the bill,
and everything else that is part of the bill.
We are convinced of this connection,
we will try to maintain it.
I don't know, not even since 9 July,
how long we can go on with our struggle.
Let's hope that when we stop, that it at least remains an example
and that if they manage to bury us,
we can at least be seeds for future inspiration,
for future plants, that will grow
and I also know
that the trade union movement,
understood as purely corporatist defence,
does not hold up.
Because in a collapsing world you cannot defend your wages,
and you cannot defend your your wages
if you do not face the end of the world.
Also because in the end
for these 1,500, 1,800, 1,200, 1,000 euros,
which we bring home.
It is useless if one day you have to spend it on medicines
for respiratory diseases, for nervous diseases
because the health system was broken up,
or if what is being built
or if what you build is destroyed in the next storm,
or by the next pandemic,
which is only discussed in terms of when it will come, not if it will come,
or by a worldwide escalation of war.
There is no defence of your terms,
nor any trade union,
if you don't join this struggle for everything.
And vice versa:
it is not possible to stand one's ground in the struggle against patriarchy.
in the ecological, anti-fascist, pacifist struggle,
if one does not dare to tackle the main contradictions of capitalism
and workers are obviously
in the front line of the struggle against these contradictions.
Thank you.
What about Fridays for Future?
What is the status of the movement?
As I said, quite interesting, also for people internationally,
what was that dynamic in Lützerath that we observed there?
And maybe you just want to
report for ten minutes about the climate strike yesterday.
And what you would say where we are right now,
both in our struggle against the end of the world and
perhaps in combination with the fight against
not making ends meet at the end of the month.
The floor is yours.
First of all, I can only agree with the previous speaker and above all,
as far as the last part is concerned.
The fight against the climate crisis must be intersectional
and that's why I think it's incredibly important that we unite,
that we do not bring together only one part of society
and take it to the streets.
That is why Fridays for Future regularly tries to establish
alliances with other groups, also with other target groups.
Lützerath was now the last example before the strike yesterday.
I'll start to tell a little bit about it.
I don't know now who knows how much about it,
if there are any questions feel free to contact me,
or if something isn't clear yet.
Lützerath is a - was a small village in Germany
in North Rhine-Westphalia
and near the open-cast lignite mine
of RWE, a large coal company.
It was to be destroyed and dredged,
so that RWE can expand the open-cast mine
and not only Lützerath but also other villages.
At the same time however
the coal phase-out has been decided,
Germany-wide and also for the state of NRW.
However, the problem is that this was all a negotiation
between the government of North Rhine-Westphalia and this company
and it was negotiated that there would be a coal phase-out in 2030
in North Rhine-Westphalia.
At the same time Lützerath
may be destroyed by RWE.
That was more or less the result of the negotiations.
But from a climate point of view
and from a from a point of view concerning justice absolutely pointless
because the coal that lies under that place, still lying there,
that hasn't yet been excavated isn't needed.
Also not for energy security.
Even if the government claims other things.
RWE too, of course.
And that means that the destruction of this place was in the end
quite pointless and actually only happened
to wrench something from the RWE Group
in these negotiations.
Yes, and there are some climate activists,
who went to this place years ago,
occupied it, built something,
after most of the villagers
were resettled, were forced to resettle.
The pressure has continued to increase,
so that the people gave in more and more.
A structure of its own was established
in which was attempted
to implement climate justice actively in everyday life
- many also speak of a small utopia -
and that has held until this January.
And then the eviction started and the activists were evicted
from this place and unfortunately Lützerath was also
destroyed relatively quickly.
Despite this my impression is
that many activists
and also other people who participated and supported
went out with a lot of motivation.
Because we managed to bring a large part of society together.
Of course many climate justice groups
but also many former residents
of Luckerath and also of the surrounding villages,
who perhaps weren't necessarily active before
and were able to experience a different approach to the subject.
And Lützerath was on the one hand a symbol
but of course also quite factual
a place where Germany failed to meet its climate targets.
But as I said, also a very strong moment
for a great, broad alliance.
We had a very, very big demo on 14 January.
And I think that a lot of people go out of this struggle
and are motivated to make more alliances
and continue to exert pressure from the street.
Of course there was also a certain challenge,
which also continues to be,
namely that RWE and coal companies have employees.
And the big question that's always in the room is, of course,
if we demand that there should be a coal phase-out
or a phase-out from fossil fuels,
what happens to the workers?
And that is exactly why
we also form alliances with trade unions.
I think that is also a long way to go,
that we have to go.
But that is the reason why we
went on strike in Germany together with ver.di yesterday.
Yesterday the twelfth global climate strike took place,
worldwide, in hundreds of places,
on six continents; more or less simultaneously
people striked for climate justice.
The international slogan was "Tomorrow is too late"
and "End fossil finance",
so clearly against fossil capitalism,
against the financing which is behind it
and which in the end
puts profits and steady growth always above human lives,
above the fight against the climate crisis.
And in Germany we have decided
to strike together with ver.di,
especially with workers from public transport
and to explicitly put pressure again and to demand a change in transport
from the government or especially from Volker Wissing
who doesn't necessarily stands for progress
and not necessarily for socially just measures in every respect.
I think that is clear to most people.
Unfortunately, he now has the decision-making power in this area.
Together we demanded
massive investment in public transport,
improvement of working conditions for the employees,
higher wages and that prices have to go down.
Because we need public transport
that is there for everybody and above all affordable for everybody.
So that mobility doesn't remain a luxury (unfortunately it is at the moment).
Unfortunately it is the case that the transport sector
is massively lagging behind.
So much for that.
In Germany only we were
on the streets in over 250 places yesterday.
And we also managed
to bring together different groups
of employees and often young people,
who do not yet have so much contact with the working world,
to trade unions, because they still go to school,
study, some of them also do an apprenticeship.
I think that is an important step and we want to pursue it further.
In Germany we had over 200,000 people on the streets.
Of course, people often talk about the fact that there are no longer so many
as a few years ago at Fridays For Future
That is true
but I would say what is important
is that the climate justice movement
continues to be very strong and growing.
New groups are emerging with new fields of action.
And I think it is also important here, that we continue to unite,
support each other and that also happens,
just like with other groups who fight for social justice.
I think that is the most important thing that we have to look at.
And that's what we see.
And that is also our goal that we continue to pursue.
We were also with an insane number of people,
different groups on the street yesterday
and our aim is to build even broader alliances,
to network further and to build a common
intersectional struggle against the climate crisis.
Thank you for this general overview on FFF and the climate movement in Germany.
The numbers are definitely stark,
even if you can see the movement downswing
we are still represented in such a great number of cities.
And the mobilisation continues to work well as we have seen in the photos
so that's definitely a pretty good starting point.
Franzi will now report a little bit
on this alliance of public transport workers and Fridays for Future.
I think it's particularly interesting
what especially leftists like to do, to say:
"This convergence there in Italy or somewhere else,
in Barcelona everything is everything so great" et cetera.
And if you now look at the pictures from yesterday,
there were also goosebumps moments for many.
There were pictures from Cologne, for example, where the climate strike was led
by colleagues from Cologne public transport
and how it could come to this,
- at the beginning of the FFF movement "Strike at school, strike at work" -
was a leftist slogan
that you heard from the side
that was what the commis wanted
- and now suddenly there was this cooperation in really many cities.
And Franzi will tell you about it now, how it came about
and what potential lies in it propably
and how these meetings should go on.
Yes, hi, I'm totally happy that we're building bridges
from the climate strike yesterday to and with you today.
Hold me back please,
I tend to rave over this matter.
Maybe I'll start with: What connects us actually?
In my mind, what connects the struggle you are fighting in Florence
with what happened on Germany's roads yesterday,
namely the joint strike of workers and the climate movement?
Last summer,
I had another moment in this climate movement
when I thought, now it's really over.
This is the next wave
when a bunch of frustrated people stop doing climate activism,
a bunch of people who say:
"It's over, we didn't get it right."
And sometimes you do things like watching labournet.tv videos,
for whatever reason.
And this is what I did
and there I heard about the fight of the workers
in Campi Bisenzio at GKN for the first time.
Conveniently I was on holiday a few weeks later and thought:
"Great, I know where I'm going."
And then I was standing there sometime in the industrial area
near Campi Bisenzio,
got lost 13 times
and then followed Dario a lot,
to ask him what is actually going on here
and somehow in the evening got into a meeting in the evening,
where on the one hand the workers met in the factory
and on the other hand groups from the community,
from the neighbourhood, who were simply there to wage this struggle together.
And I sat there the whole time and I was completely stunned
and thought, it cannot be,
that we can't manage to build something like that, too.
And for me this kick-off of the joint climate strike happened yesterday,
a moment
when for the first time I really had the feeling
"Well, why shouldn't it work actually?
Maybe we can do exactly that, too."
Because actually, as Julia just said,
this motto "Strike in school, university and company,
that is our answer to your politics" was true for me
for the first time on this climate strike yesterday.
Because school and university, we have always been on strike there in the movement, of course.
But that the company was also involved,
we have not really had that yet.
And insofar it became true for the first time.
And it is a moment that can totally give hope
but it is also just a moment of departure
and of the first step and many must follow.
And so now I would like to give a little report on how this could come about.
But I want to let it be understood as an appeal first of all,
that it is up to all of us
to fight these battles together and to carry on,
because otherwise we won't win them.
Because this joint strike
did not start yesterday morning at 3 o'clock at the picket line
in the transport company.
And it didn't start the day before at the banner painting.
That this alliance was formed in so many cities yesterday,
that climate activists picked up workers in the middle of the night
from the picket line,
that they went go together to the climate strike
and that workers lead a climate strike demonstration,
because it is just as much about them as it is about the expansion of public transport.
It is just as much about their wages, about their working conditions
as it is about more buses and trains.
This did not start the day before yesterday,
but is the result of months of work
that activists on the on the ground have done.
It started with the first walk to the depot,
the first mail to to the shop stewards, to the works council,
to the trade union secretaries,
and in the vast majority of cases also much, much scepticism.
Because it is not the case that this alliance
came about yesterday or usually comes about,
because suddenly everybody says: "Exactly, climate crisis, that is the topic,
we always wanted to to do something about it
but in the first place something comes together,
that is the fight against the climate crisis for climate activists
but for workers in public transport, or even in the car industry,
perhaps first of all a fight against their own job loss,
against the shitty working conditions,
against the fact that everything is getting worse and worse
and that there's no perspective after all.
That's not immediately unity, that's not immediately common ground,
but as a rule networking started a few months ago
with the first talks about - and many, many question marks -
about what actually connects us.
What the bus driver at five in the morning has in common with us climate activists,
who might be coming home at that time and want to sleep.
It begins with the Immediate, I would say.
It started with the frustration about the working conditions.
It started with the clarity that it can't go on like this.
And then piece by piece just
also with the discovery of the 90% common ground that we have,
namely clarity,
that a traffic turnaround won't work
with just more buses and trains,
but that it also needs people who drive them.
That it's just connected how a bus driver is being paid,
how someone who works in a garage,
under what conditions this takes place
and ultimately how the mobility turnaround in Germany works or does not work.
And this discovery was a process that took place
in joint meetings, that has taken place
at works meetings, which has taken place
also at the depot and the very end on the picket line.
And of course the picket was the target,
but of course not the beginning and not the end either,
but a first step
to think and to develop how it can actually look like,
when we say we are doing common cause.
We ride together and we strike together
and we fight for these changes that it needs, together.
And I think it's very crucial,
that this is not a foregone conclusion. Because Julia has just reported from Cologne:
Until a few weeks ago
the employees of the Cologne transport company wanted to have nothing to do
with climate activists, they had the feeling that they are somehow foreign.
They want to do do their thing
and now they want to have us in the photo.
And one could have thought, yes, then it's over now
with the common traffic turnaround, what a pity,
but one has not understood each other.
Instead, climate activists continued,
continued the conversation,
collected signatures of support in the urban community,
from people who say: "I support the workers' demand,
the immediate, more money in the account at the end of the month",
and so, bit by bit built up trust,
a common language, and a clarity about it,
this is not about to somehow talk someone into it,
that any problems are connected for whatever reason
but they've made it clear that this is what it is really about,
to support in the immediate and then to fight for what is urgently necessary
on a much, much larger level.
And this has led to the fact that a fortnight ago the workers
of the Cologne public transport company said "we are in",
and that they led the climate strike yesterday,
and on this climate strike there was the decisive question,
whether the climate activists and the workers,
who are standing together right there
are prepared not to let the whole thing degenerate to symbolism,
but to further develop this alliance
over the next few months, over the whole next year.
And you will perhaps stumble across this video of it
somewhere on the internet.
Check it out, because the answer is a really loud yes
and that's exactly what it needs.
And it is an example how it can be done,
how we can make common cause with each other.
The truth is also:
it takes a lot of really, really hard work to make that happen.
It takes really a lot of people and it's about that now: the strikes
in the transport companies, the strikes in the public sector continue to escalate.
Are we still there tomorrow or was it yesterday's business?
And that's exactly why it's the perfect time,
that we meet here today.
The employers' side then said yesterday:
Ver.di, this is crossing frontiers.
You combine collective bargaining with politics.
Yes, of course it is about that,
turning political issues into disputes of trade union struggles.
Because of course every trade union struggle and every struggle for more wages
and every struggle for fair working conditions
is a question of politics and a question of distribution,
a question of justice and a question of the world we want.
And that is what we can and should build up in the coming months.
And when employers talk about transgressions,
then they are absolutely right. That crosses a line,
because there are boundaries being broken between activists and workers,
between those who otherwise might even fight against each other
and then suddenly the opponent is a common one,
namely the one with really a lot of money,
Those who don't suffer under
but gain in every crisis.
And there was a very funny Tagesthemen commentary yesterday,
from a woman who said: "Where are we going with this?
Do the climate activists possibly even want to
make common cause with the Industrial Union of Metalworkers?
The answer is a very, very clear yes.
And that is why we fight today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow side by side,
and this here today is a warm invitation,
firstly, to support the colleagues and comrades in Florence,
secondly, to do the same here
and thirdly, in perspective, maybe to win one day.