Hello to all, Greetings from GKN.
At this moment
we are inside the factory.
We have been inside the factory since 9 July 2021 and hold a permanent assembly.
We have lost track of how many days and months it has been.
I think it's more than 13 month now.
To say that we regret our absence
at the climate camp in Venice is an understatement.
But we will see you on Saturday at the climate demo.
We are coming
to hug you
and to emphasise once again how much the social question
is linked to the fight for climate justice.
And what happened at GKN proves that 100%.
I return to our history,
not because it is central to the debate,
but because it is an example,
which shows us what is happening in general.
As everyone knows, we were an automobile company,
we are still an automobile company, because the factory is
in the same condition since 9 July.
We are victims of the relocation of production of a multinational company,
of a financial fund, to be precise.
One of the various excuses they gave for the planned redundancies
was: ‘If you want Greta, then you'll get your redundancies.’
We were well aware that this was untrue
and the things that we have done in these months
include the proposal to set up a public hub for sustainable mobility.
So the idea is that a factory in which millions of euros in investment,
probably to a large extent through tax relief,
(there has never been clarity and transparency)
- that this factory could be linked up with all the other car companies,
which are in process of winding down production, in particular Stellantis.
Through public intervention these factories could be
linked up to public ecological research
which would be radically ecological rather than greenwashing.
This in turn could be connected with other public projects, which already exist,
namely the project that Invitalia developed within the framework of the former Irisbus
within the Italian bus industry.
On the one hand we need a reappropriation of the factories
to get them up and running again, also with more rights for workers,
with a reduction in working hours for the same pay. - Because it is obvious
that the number of employees in the automotive industry
will probably not be fully maintained.
But this could be the opportunity to reduce working time
with full payment, to work less and have work for everybody.
And at the same time,
we can plan new public means of transport
and commission public research to find out,
how these can be eco-friendly,
also at the level of motorisation.
This plan
was completely ignored by the public institutions of the state.
An investor from the Ciociaria came, unclear in what capacity
and has, we do not know with what money, bought this factory.
We have defended our rights, we made a framework agreement,
establishing that we would continue to work in a employment relationship
with the same rights and working hours.
And we had to look at the
re-industrialisation plan presented by the investor.
But this plan was only there to suppress the public debate
about our idea of a hub for sustainable mobility.
He simply claimed that this factory should be saved,
by removing the machines
in exchange for new machines.
In the framework agreement we inserted a clause that prevents delays
because we know that usually these
re-industrialisation plans of investors are a method,
to wear down the workers and their struggles,
by putting them on reduced wages or allowances for years on end
while they wait for the re- industrialisation that never arrives.
In fact, despite the framework agreement
we maintained the permanent assembly,
we continued to guard the factory,
and maintain social control over the factory.
These following eight months I'll spare you.
We wondered whether we would become a historic example or just an episode.
In these eight months they have done everything to reduce us to an episode:
round tables that are postponed, where they say the investor is coming,
who doesn't come after all.
The communication method of the employers is very simple:
they make big announcements in the newspapers,
which are almost always inaccurate and unfounded,
in which they say that everything is fine,
that the factory requires a complex technical knowledge
and this announcement then makes the rounds.
There is a saying, that says that
when the lie has already gone round the world,
the truth is still busy tying its shoelaces.
So they have convinced the public that everything is over,
that we had resumed work.
After an explosive phase of the fight against the redundancies,
came the phase of attrition, also of loneliness.
But we have resisted
and in the framework agreement we had an anti-delay clause,
which stipulates that if by August
this re-industrialisation has not materialised
- with contracts, trade relations and investment agreements -
the investor must carry out the re-industrialisation himself.
The problem is that this investor has no industrial capacity.
Last month it was officially announced
that of the planned 50 million in investments
at least 35 million should be public money.
Money from tax relief, non-repayable funds, capital flow directly from Invitalia
possibly even directly from the Ministry of Finance.
The investor has no real plan, because the actual plan is
to turn us into a minor subcontracted supplier,
which in six years might employ only 340 employees
and thus violates the framework agreement,
which refers to at least 370 employees.
This would mean that more than 100 people are on the street.
So the redundancies would have happened
albeit in attenuated form.
Their plan is about the nationalisation of losses.
In December, Invitalia and therefore the state
did not even consider our public hub for sustainable mobility
despite the public intervention, the competences of our suporters
and the public research centres and universities in the region.
Today we have a factory on the verge of collapse,
which is in no way sustainable.
The integration courses are public, the short-time working allowance is public
and that's why we want the factory today to be
a socially integrated, public factory.
A factory that is free from profiteering, free from any kind of fraud,
a factory under the control of the workers of the permanent assembly.
And if these public funds do not flow,
we fight for them to flow.
If they finally flow, then we will fight to ensure
that public funds correspond with public control
and public interest.
So the truth is that the radical environmental movement,
the class movement, the insurrectionary movement,
the convergence of movements in this country
have the concrete experiment of a potentially public factory at hand.
Public in terms of money, public due to the strong presence
of a collective organisation like the factory collective.
Public in the region, which it defends.
We cannot open up this perspective alone.
We have come this far and now we have to be a 'We'.
This perspective consists of at least three levels:
The first is the general mobilisation.
We have called to link the protests on 23rd of September and 22nd of October.
23 September is the Global Climate Strike, which we are happy to join,
but after that, we protest together with others on 22 October
in Bologna.
For us, the 23 September and 22 October are exactly the same,
because they fit the slogan ‘For this, for that and for everything’.
and the complete merging of social and climate justice.
We are doing the demo in Bologna
because in Bologna, among the many things that animate the movements in this city,
there is a struggle against the construction of a new ring road.
The new bypass is built for private individual transport.
As a car worker I lose my job,
the state socialises the losses from the relocations of production,
without creating a public hub for sustainable transport,
and elsewhere they enlarge the roads for private transport!
We want a public hub for sustainable mobility.
Sustainable mobility means free public transport,
it means a transport system with sustainable engines,
it means public and social means of transport,
which are produced in public and social factories,
in terms of workers' rights and their composition.
The other plan, however, is what we are going to do here in this factory.
So we are going to organise Open Days from 9 October
to bring the socially integrated factory alive.
The other plan is that we need all the skills of our supporters,
to do something that we have never done before:
to develop forms of self-management and to give ourselves co-operative structures
that enable us to do this.
With a self-discipline that we unfortunately didn't develope in the past,
because we were used to having the boss over us.
That's it, I'm already over the 10 minutes.
I know I haven't contributed much to the wider debate,
about the connection between trade union issues
and social issues. I have only reported on the GKN case.
But the latest developments have probably made this necessary.
So see you on Saturday in Venice.
See you on 23 September on all the squares
and on 22 October I hope to see you all in Bologna.
There is one question that we are often asked:
How is the trade union struggle linked to the environmental issue?
If someone defends the class only from an economic point of view,
then this is not class struggle,
but trade union bureaucratism, which is not part of the traditions
of the labour movement,
which has always defended the worker as a whole person,
in terms of safety, the environment and also their economic capacity.
Those who believe they can fight to get to the end of the month
without also fighting abainst the end of the world will not succeed.
We have succeeded because we led many radical struggles
for Article 18 against the labour leasing of temporary workers.
Each time there was
an unforeseen emergency, which they used against us:
On 14 February 2020, an important strike was won and the Covid lockdown came.
In July 2020 we began with an important strike
and a year later they took advantage of the end of the redundancy freeze
during the pandemic in order to send us home.
Then came the war, then the drought, the water crisis, and now the rising bills.
The truth is that the economic reproduction
of the working class in this society is being undermined
by the permanent crisis, in which we are sinking.
That's why you either fight together ‘For this, for that and for everything’,
or the individual struggle, whatever it may be for
(in the neighbourhood, in the region, in the factory or in the industry) does not succeed.
And it doesn't succeed because, if we don't entirely
commit ourselves to the struggle,
we can at maximum be like hamsters in a wheel.
Another turn of the wheel, of precariousness,
of the performance bonus to aliviate inflation somewhat,
but in the end you always stay in this wheel.
That's our experience. At the climate camp in Turin
an important example was made:
The tram that
leaves from the centre of Turin,
with every kilometre it travels to the suburbs,
the life expectancy of local people shrinks by half a year.
That's what we're working for, that's why we are trying to defend this factory,
why we are fighting to have labour rights.
We want to have a job that allows us to
re-produce ourselves as a whole, as individuals.
Your life, these six months more or less that you will live,
depend on how crowded the emergency room is, what air you breathe,
on the respiratory diseases of the people around you,
on the quality of your food,
even on your mental health
or on the fact that you don't have to endure certain work rhythms,
or to suppress your sexuality.
It all belongs together. - Because of this, because of that, and because of everything.
Thank you and sorry again for our absence.