No “Christmas truce” for the struggles of the SI Cobas – Against police and Confederates

The vast majority of the workers organized in the SI Cobas are employed in the logistics sector, more precisely in the warehouses as porters, pickers, etc. The SI Cobas, not without encountering considerable difficulties, has also started to organize drivers, still within the logistics sector, including both van drivers, who deliver a reduced number of orders over a short distance, and long-distance lorry drivers. Outside the logistics sector the SI Cobas has recently started to engage in a campaign of recruitment and organization of struggles, with some degreeof success, in the slaughterhouses.

For the full implementation of the contract in the food-industry the struggles began at dawn on December 21, with pickets blocking the transport entrance, more than 100 workers at Alcar Uno of Castelnuovo Rangone and 50 workers of Globalcarni Spilamberto, which are meat-processing plants in the province of Modena. After several hours of blockading the workers have moved to the city Prefecture where a mediation to a union truce was obtained, in view of a meeting on 13 January.

The workers of GLS of Montale (Piacenza) were in the lead of the strikes in the main plants of the firm in Italy, which led to a national accord and to similar agreements in TNT, Bartolini and SDA.

The GLS, however, thought it possible to go on the offensive.

In view of the last general strike organized in the logistics sector in October 29 last year, three out of the four delegates of SI Cobas passed over to the CGIL and with them most of the members, which left 25 workers of SI Cobas out of 125. The strike, successful on a national level, went badly in this warehouse, with the CGIL operating by strike-breaking, as across the rest of Italy.

The SI Cobas of Piacenza reacted promptly, first by organizing a meeting on November 4 in front of the workplace and then in other regional headquarters of the union. Following the suspension “for disciplinary reasons” of the only delegate of SI Cobas, on December 8 a strike was organized, backed by a one-hour stoppage in warehouses throughout Italy. After 5 hours of blockading of in and out movements the company cancelled the suspension. The success of this strike brought back a good number of workers to SI Cobas, bringing membership up to 52.

The result of the general strike of 29 October, and of the whole of the previous protest movement, was meeting with the bosses on November 18 in Bologna, in the SI Cobas headquarters, which for the first time involved three of the leading companies of the industry – Bartolini, GLS and TNT – and FEDIT, the main syndicate of the industrialists of this category, an important fact as de facto recognition by the bosses for SI Cobas. The fact must be given its due weight, and recognition cannot become the pivot of trade union action, because only the maintenance of the force which achieved it, or rather its growth, guarantees its real bargaining power.

Subsequent events confirm that the bosses, while they seem to want to come to terms with the union, will use every means to break its strength. During the night of 22/3 eight members of the CGIL of Piacenza GLS warehouse violently attacked four militants of SI Cobas. The first attack took place against two workers in the canteen, then against two others who were working in isolated locations. All four were hospitalized, one was in a coma for several hours. In protest eighty workers have immediately abandoned the warehouse and have been on strike for a few hours. Then, by assembly decision, having the company said they would punish the attackers, who were then all fired, have gone back to work.

As mentioned, the assailants were all members of the CGIL, which has not made any condemnation of the incidents. Worse, we recall, in fact did the Filt Cgil Lazio, which in a statement had defended, justifying the actions, its members who attacked the striking workers of SI Cobas on May 19 last year in the warehouse of SDA Roma 1. As for base unions, only the CUB has expressed its solidarity with the workers and with the SI Cobas. Others have not deemed it necessary to say anything about such an evidently grave episode.

Also in Rome SI Cobas has managed to mobilize a number of workers taking part in pickets, moving in a very large area, from Fiano to Santa Palomba or to Tiburtina, a distance of over 80 km.

At the Carrefour warehouse in Santa Palomba, on the Via Ardeatina, in July 30 of the 45 employees of the Euro Progea consortium went on strike about wage payments, after yet another delay in being paid, demanding the opening of talks on poor working conditions: working 12-hour shifts in cold stores and paid just 50 Euros. The instructions on the movement of parcels are given to porters through headsets, which cause headaches, while the company does not even provide proper clothing and protective equipment, which porters end up bringing from home. Also they denounced unpaid working hours and sick leaves, poor family allowances and seniority.

A new mobilization took place there on December 23 when management denied the extension of contracts of a group of seven workers whose fixed-term contract had expired. The SI Cobas organized three blockades of the movement of warehouse goods. The first on the evening of the 23rd for three hours; the second, on the night of 28th, for five hours; and the third, which was the largest, involving about sixty workers, on 15th January. Our comrades were also present.

On the morning of Dec. 23rd a strike began at Bormioli Rocco of Fidenza (Parma) for retaining all of the jobs and salary levels, when the contract of the cooperative working in the plant changed. Here too pickets blockaded goods entrances. The strike continued to the bitter end, with the pickets holding firm day and night, despite the cold and the holidays. On December 30th, the company announced that it had reached an agreement with Cgil and Cisl but the majority of the porters rejected this, because this agreed contract was much worse. This showed an exemplary determination and a spirit of sacrifice. The agreement signed by the confederations included keeping only 50 permanent contract workers in the workplace but not those with fixed-term contracts which expired at the end of the year and in March; it would not guarantee the salary levels, nor the continuation of work in that warehouse, opening the way for possible transfers.

At the stroke of 4 o’clock in the morning of January 5 the porters of the contracted cooperative Associate Services at the Penny Market Warehouse of Desenzano del Garda, the most important of this chain in Italy, went on strike to obtain the proper work routines, seniority and the implementation of the national contract. The strike and picketing continued to the bitter end. At an unsuccessful meeting at the Prefecture of Brescia, it was proposed to demobilize workers in exchange for a meeting after two weeks.

On Friday 8, in front of pickets in Fidenza and Desenzano numerous squads of police were deployed. Despite the picketing being robust and tenacious, they eventually had to give way. In the morning they were cleared in Desenzano. Some Pakistani porters, when they were attacked, shouted “Allah Akbar”, God is great. The bourgeois press took the opportunity to describe the picket as being promoted by Islamic extremists. The Regional Councillor for Civil Protection declared that “we must return these extremists in Pakistan straight away.” The goal of the Bourgeois is to isolate Pakistani workers from Italian workers, who must not see this strike as an example of real struggle.

The following day the workers returned to work and found the warehouse closed tight, with goods diverted to the base in Arborio (Vercelli).

At Bormioli the political police even proposed, under the threat of use of force, the agreement of the confederates. The refusal led to blows and resistance by the workers. One by one they are removed from the picket line, and placed in armoured vehicles. About 40 workers were taken to a police station, and detained there for eight hours then being released with charges of resisting a public officer and civil violence. But they would not bow their heads because on the Saturday night there was a march through the centre of Fidenza, shouting “Bormioli Rocco, tomorrow another blockade” and on Monday morning they returned to picketing the company. After eleven hours there was a new intervention with four armoured police vehicles and carabinieri. The next morning also this plant remained closed by a lockout.

In response to the lockout of Desenzano, on Wednesday 13, at 4 am, the SI Cobas mounted a picket line of about eighty workers at the Penny Market warehouse in Arborio (Vercelli). In addition to the porters of Desenzano there are workers and militants of SI Cobas of Brescia, Milan, Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Genoa, including a group of drivers already on strike, working for a company which operates within the warehouse; these were all of different nationalities: Italian, Pakistani, Romanians, Poles, Moroccans, Senegalese. Workers from many countries, united by a common goal – the struggle against exploitation – from which country does not matter. The workers who work in the warehouse, none of whom were enrolled in SI Cobas, did not resent the picket line, which was total, and some workers stopped to talk to pickets before entering work. The external yard was filled with trucks. The Penny Market in Italy has six logistics warehouses, two of which, being the most important, are now closed down, one by the bosses lock-out, the other by the workers. In the early afternoon, the company agreed to meet a delegation of SI Cobas. At five, after thirteen hours, the blockade was terminated with an agreement that committed Penny Market and cooperative to reopen, within ten days, the warehouse of Desenzano, with the return of workers, and the start of negotiations on the implementation of the national contract.

Two days later, on Friday 15, the porters went on strike at ND Logistics and DHL of Settala (Milan), at ND Pontenure (Piacenza) and a new blockade was established in front of the factory of Bormioli, Fidenza. In the early afternoon, having ended the strike at ND, part of the workers of Pontenure warehouse, along with a group of workers in Desenzano who had come out to support them, would go to strengthen the blockade at Bormioli. Towards the evening, two contingents, one of police and the other of carabinieri, assaulted the workers, this time not merely to evict the pickets – the fourth in a week – but with a frontal charge, batons in hand, chasing them up the traffic ring road and then lined up inside the factory gates.

Not even this more brutal use of bourgeois state force did impede the SI Cobas and workers. The same evening the workers paraded again in procession through the centre of Fidenza. The next morning, Saturday, as we were concluding this article, a new picket was deployed in front of the factory, reinforced by workers of Desenzano, Brescia, Milan, Piacenza and Bologna. Meanwhile in Milan the workers go on strike in Ortofin of Trucazzano, Settala and Liscate.

Perhaps the government, i.e., the bourgeoisie, has decided to break the labour movement in logistics sector and its union, the SI Cobas, by hook or by crook, before it expands beyond the limits of this sector, infecting other categories and organizing the working class. But are they finding this a tough nut to crack, and we hope that this is the case, and operate so that they end up with broken teeth.

One thing is certain: when workers go down the road of struggle, with real strikes, to the bitter end, with pickets blockading goods and scabs, the bourgeois regime slips away democratic mask and shows its true face, that of the dictatorship of capital on the working class.