Florence (2021-07-19) – Leaflet Distributed for Italian Provincial Strike at GKN-auto

[the following leaflet was released by ICP comrades in Italy against closures at factories of the GKN group. GKN provided parts for Stellantis auto groups which includes Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot amongst others]

The struggle at GKN must be included in a general protests at the Stellantis group and united with all the other struggles against the redundancies in order to obtain a reduction in working hours, 100% unemployment benefits for laid off workers!

Since 30 June – the day of the release of redundancies granted by Cgil Cisl and Uil to the government and employers – the list of companies announcing closures and redundancies has grown longer: GKN in Florence, Gianetti Ruote in Monza, Whirlpool in Naples, Timken in Brescia, ABB in Vicenza and many other smaller ones that are not newsworthy.

The CGIL leadership is now pretending to be indignant and the Fiom leadership has called a two-hour national strike, divided by territory and by factory: they are trying to regain credibility with the workers, which is increasingly difficult, and above all with their own members and delegates, in whom discontent is rife.

In confirmation of how bogus are the intentions of the regime unions – that they do not intend to call the workers to fight – Fiom Fim and Uilm have not called any mobilization of the workers in the factories of the Stellantis group, except for a two-hour strike at Mirafiori just for July 30. And yet it is clear that, if there is any chance of reversing the closure of GKN, it lies in promoting first and foremost a struggle of the whole ex-FIAT group, for which GKN devoted most of its production.

The automotive sector is particularly affected by the crisis of overproduction that has been afflicting the global capitalist economy as a whole for decades. A few weeks ago, in the main Stellantis plant in Italy – the one in Melfi – Fiom Fim and Uilm signed a disgraceful agreement to reduce the production lines to a single one and to transfer the production of ancillary industries to the parent factory. This will lead to further redundancies both in the factory and in the supply chain.

A general dispute in the Stellantis group should demand, against redundancies and closures of factories in the group and in the allied industries, a reduction in working hours and an increase in the redundancy fund to 100% of the salary, since a large part of the workers in all the factories work only a few days a month and receive miserable salaries, which prevents them from participating in strikes on the few days they are at work.

It is this kind of union action that the workers of GKN, Gianetti, Timken – all factories in the automobile sector – need, not the fake solidarity of institutions, church and bourgeois parties, or two hours of strike action proclaimed by the regime’s unions to save face.

But the struggle of the GKN workers must also be linked to the struggles against redundancies in all other sectors. The closure of the GKN plant, even though it was fully operational until the very end, is also a consequence of the crisis of overproduction in the world capitalist economy: increasingly asphyxiated markets lead to increasingly fierce competition between industrial groups and an exasperated search for cost savings, which presumably led Stellantis to prefer other suppliers of components that were produced by GKN.

For years, companies have been closing factories in industrially mature countries and relocating them to young capitalism, where wages are lower. But overproduction is a process that is inexorably advancing in the world economy and is already beginning to affect even those capitalisms that are no longer so young, that have matured early, starting with China.

In this situation, trade union defence of workers cannot be conducted company by company: it is a matter of defending the entire working class from the economic crisis of world capitalism.

The CGIL, CISL and UIL refuse to do so, and for decades have instead refined, together with bosses and governments, a sophisticated mechanism of ’company crisis management’, aimed at resolving each dispute for itself, isolating any fight against redundancies within the factory walls. There are more than a hundred company crisis tables open at the MISE, where workers’ anger and hopes are withered away.

That is why it is necessary to support and fight for the unity of action of conflictual unionism – grassroots unions and combative union fractions in the CGIL – so that it can really stand as a candidate to replace the regime unions in the direction of the trade union struggle. There is still much to be done in this area.

Finally, this year, a few days ago, a national general strike of all grassroots trade unions was called for 18 October. It will be necessary to work for its best success and the widest adhesion of the groups of combative workers still within the regime unions.

This first important result in the battle for the unity of action of conflictual trade unionism has certainly not been definitively achieved, with the leaderships of grassroots trade unionism that for years opposed it by promoting divided actions, and that only contingently changed course. Only the pressure from below of groups of combative workers can allow this unity of action to become a stable and organic factor, which is deployed at all levels of trade union action – company, territorial, category, inter-category – leading to the formation of a unified class union front, a further step towards the rebirth – outside and against the regime unions – of a large class union.

The occupation of the factory by the GKN workers is a confirmation of their combativeness. But in the context of the crisis of overproduction, the fight against redundancies cannot stop at the factory gates, only by opposing its closure. Even if every factory is occupied and production is carried out by the workers, what is the point of producing goods that have no market outlet? Moreover, competition between companies, in which the bosses try to involve the workers by instilling a corporatist spirit in them, in order to squeeze them better, would become a problem for the workers themselves.

The same applies to the suggestion of nationalisation of the big companies: the workers in state-owned industry would also be in competition with other companies on the world market, they would also have to sacrifice themselves in order for ’their’ state-owned company to win in the arena of the international market, which is increasingly clogged up with overproduction, and, in all of this, the nationalist ideology, rather than that of the international workers’ union, would be fostered in them.

What workers need in order to live are primarily wages and time off from exploitation. The fight against redundancies, against the closure of factories, is the first necessary step. Uniting these struggles is the next step, but it can only be completed with common demands that unite all workers, without divisions between large and small companies, without binding them to corporatist and nationalist views, without dividing them along national borders. These demands are full wages for redundant workers and a reduction in working hours and working life.

The workers’ struggle to defend themselves against the effects of the crisis of the capitalist economy must not be confined to the fortresses of a few factories, but must go out of them and into the streets and squares, to involve and join the hundreds of thousands of workers who have already been made redundant despite the blockade.

The world capitalist economy, due to its inexorable contradictions, has been in decline for years and will collapse in the near future. Workers must be organised to fight not for its impossible maintenance, keeping open factories that the capitalists want to close, but in defence of their needs, demanding satisfaction. It is these trade union demands that are likely, because of their class characteristics, to take the trade union struggle to the political terrain, finally making concrete the motto taken up by the GKN workers: Let’s rise up!