Workers Struggles Italy: GKN Workers as an Example of a Class Union Movement

The struggle against the redundancies at GKN in Campi Bisenzio has taken on national importance in these months of struggle following the closure. This result was achieved thanks to the pugnacity of its workers who, in a process that began some time ago, have been able to increase their unity and fight on class union positions, obtaining better working conditions than those, worse, accepted over the years, even by FIOM, despite the fact that almost all – workers, delegates, connection delegates – are part of this union, framed in the area of internal opposition.

With the acceptance by CGIL and CISL and UIL of the release of layoffs, last June 29, GKN was one of the first companies to announce the closure, on July 9. As constantly reiterated by the Permanent Assembly of workers and their Factory Collective, the struggle at GKN is not a case in itself but one of hundreds of disputes against layoffs, to which must be added the 870 thousand jobs lost – according to ISTAT – since the beginning of the pandemic, despite the freeze on layoffs, just by virtue of the non-renewal of fixed-term contracts.

Every struggle against layoffs is a piece against the attack on the living conditions of the entire working class and demonstrates its spontaneous resistance to the pressure of world capitalism which, in order to slow down its inexorable decline and sink into the crisis of overproduction, pushes for an increase in unemployment on the one hand and in the exploitation of the employed on the other.

In order for this resistance to be more effective, it is clear that it would be necessary first of all to unite the struggles against the layoffs, overcoming their isolation within the confines of the company, and then these with those of the employed and already unemployed workers.

The workers of GKN in these two months have been very committed in this direction, meeting with workers from other companies and categories, supporting workers in the struggle even if they belong to other unions, starting with the workers of Texprint Prato organized in the SI Cobas, or those of the former Alitalia with Cub and Usb, organizing a tour of assemblies throughout Italy, from Naples to Milan, and reaffirming their desire to fight so that their struggle follows a different path from the failed one of many previous ones.

In fact, the unions of the regime (CGIL, CISL, UIL) have not only been signing for decades worsening contract renewals, not only in the middle of the summer they have given the gift of the release of redundancies to the industrialists: in addition, they have always kept isolated within the walls of the factory every fight against layoffs, wearing out the anger and resistance of workers in illusory and useless institutional tables.

The union of the workers’ struggles cannot be achieved by these unions collaborating with the bosses and their political regime, but only by opposing their conciliatory policy. It is grassroots unionism that should be a candidate to carry out this essential task, but to be up to it, it must first of all promote the most rigorous unity of action of all the combative unionism.

It is not a question of placing here and now the workers of the GKN and the other workers in struggle who still belong to CGIL CISL and UIL in front of the problem of their exit from these collaborationist trade unions. The class union will be reborn outside and against the unions of the regime, but to take a step in this direction, today, in the condition of serious weakness of the working class, it is necessary to work to unite all the forces of combative unionism in the action of struggle: the areas of conflict within the CGIL and groups of combative workers also present in CISL and UIL, with all the rank and file unions.

The general strike of October 11, proclaimed by all the grassroots unions for the first time in many years, in a completely unified way, is an important step in this direction.

But, in order to succeed in involving as large a number as possible of workers still organized in the regime unions as well as unorganized workers, the strike must be prepared as hard and as unitedly as the proclamation.

The failure of the unitary organization of the national assembly that was scheduled for Sunday, September 19 in Bologna was a step backwards, an important missed opportunity to involve workers from all ongoing struggles. It is the confirmation of the fact that the unitary general strike is not a result acquired definitively but revocable at any time because of the opportunism of the current leadership of the grassroots unionism. It is only the workers and combative delegates who can impose on these leaders the indispensable unity of action of combative unionism.

Conflict unionism must act unitedly to give effective support to the battle at the GKN, and with it all workers’ struggles, and the workers of the GKN can make an important contribution in helping the forces within conflict unionism work to overcome the obstacles to its unity of action.

However, the strength that the GKN workers have built up in such an exemplary way in the factory over the years will not be enough to win this struggle. The workers know this, and that is why they continually emphasize that what is needed is to change the balance of power between the owner class and the working class. The best way to use this strength, for themselves and for the entire working class, is to put it at the service of uniting the struggles of the workers.

Uniting the struggles against layoffs is a necessary first step. The workers of GKN would certainly have the authority – for example – to convene a national assembly of workers struggling against the layoffs, as a basis for joint mobilizations. But it is necessary to take this first step in the knowledge that sticking to the defensive line of rejecting the layoffs is neither sufficient nor sustainable in the long run because the capitalist economy, due to the crisis of overproduction, is destined to increase the mass of unemployed, which it will be essential to organize.

It is necessary to give the trade union movement claims that unify them between employed and unemployed, between workers of large and small companies, between workers with fixed-term and permanent contracts, and that free them from reformist political perspectives that propose failed plans to save the capitalist economy.

The goal of a law against relocations is illusory because no one can regulate the capitalist economy. It demoralizes the workers because it does not meet their needs and bogs them down in the maze of parliamentary politics. Even if it were accepted, it would lead them towards the politics of the defense of national industry, of nationalism, the favorite terrain of the ruling class, as well as of fascism, in its awareness that the only bourgeois political perspective for the exit from the crisis of overproduction is war. The same applies to the claim of nationalizations.

The occupation of the factory may be a contingent necessity of the struggle – as is happening at the GKN – but if taken as a general method of struggle it does not favor the unification and strengthening of the union workers’ movement, because it once again closes the workers in the factories instead of uniting them outside of them, in the streets, in the union and political venues, where only the motto “let’s rise up” can become concrete. Nor is it true that it brings them closer to an understanding of the necessity of struggling for political power, deluding them into believing that it is possible to achieve possession of the means of production without replacing the bourgeois State machine with the proletarian one.

If the capitalist economy, because of its inexorable contradictions, has been in decline for years and will collapse tomorrow, in order to rise from the struggles company by company to a general movement the workers must be organized to fight not to keep open at all costs the factories that the capitalists want to close, but in defense of their needs, demanding satisfaction – together as a social class – to the bourgeois political regime.

What proletarians need to live is wages on the one hand and time free from exploitation on the other. The elementary demands that unify the working class are those that give satisfaction to these needs: wage increases, full wages to the laid-off, layoffs at 100% of wages, reduction of working hours for equal wages and working life.

A genuinely class-based trade union claim plan and the united action of confrontational unionism that supports it are the factors that can create the most favorable conditions for the rebirth of the trade union and political workers’ movement. But this prospect can only be opened up by the political struggle against the opportunism of the many workers’ political parties and groups, some of which lead the combative union bodies, a struggle that only the authentic communist party can lead.

Typical of opportunism is the frantic search for the construction of the party through political fronts and, playfully, the subordination to this illusory goal of the necessary construction of a single class union front. In a completely idealistic way opportunism believes that it is the conscious element, the political party, that can set the union workers’ movement in motion again. Instead, the workers’ movement of struggle will arise from their elementary needs – economic, union – not from the development of the higher level of struggle, political.

That is why militant workers in workers’ political groups – and all combative workers – must put themselves at the service of building a single class union front. This is a fundamental ground on which the difference between trade union-political opportunism and the authentic revolutionary communist party is measured.