Factories like barracks: FIAT chooses the path of sackings and repression

FdCA Labour Commission statement

Following the high percentage of NO votes, abstentions and blank votes at Pomigliano against the agreement signed by the CISL, UIL, UGL and FISMIC, FIAT has begun what can only be described as reprisals against FIOM and SLAI-Cobas members and activists in factories throughout the country. [Italiano]

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Factories like barracks

FIAT chooses the path of sackings and repression

Following the high percentage of NO votes, abstentions and blank votes at Pomigliano against the agreement signed by the CISL, UIL, UGL and FISMIC, FIAT has begun what can only be described as reprisals against FIOM and SLAI-Cobas members and activists in factories throughout the country.

The climate of intimidation in Pomigliano remains heavy after the courageous NO vote in the workers' referendum and there are now widespread fears that the birth of the NewCo will lead to mass lay-offs. FIAT has responded in a very heavy-handed manner to the wave of strikes at the Melfi, Mirafiori, Termoli and Cassino plants against the changes in shift patterns and the refusal to pay performance bonuses, but above all against the sackings at the SATA plant in Melfi and at the Mirafiori plant. And now a worker from Termoli has been fired. Who will be next?

The decades roll by, but the company has never lost its traditional vocation for inflexibility when it comes to the strategy of the "factory as barracks", which has plagued the bodies and dignity of generations of workers in its (vain) attempt to destroy their fighting spirit and their ability to organize the struggle and the resistance from below, factory by factory.

CEO Sergio Marchionne's plan, then is nothing less than yet another updated version of the old FIAT method of never tolerating opposition of any kind to the company's plans for restructuring and redundancies, and perpetually seeking full control over work rates, time management and wage policies linked to productivity.

After Termini Imerese, abandoned by FIAT and inevitably destined for closure by 2011, with the complicity of local institutions and collaborationist unions, there are now fears for the Tychy plant in Poland, where the climate of intimidation is being repeated mercilessly after the letter of solidarity by Polish workers to their colleagues in Pomigliano.

The struggle at FIAT, both in Italy and elsewhere, must therefore be seen as a demonstration of the possibility of mobilization and workers' opposition to the company's plans that - be it in Italy, Poland or Serbia - use the crisis as a weapon with which to blackmail the workers, forcing them to submit to the logic of profits and dividends.

FIAT workers need the solidarity of all metalworkers, of all workers in industry and in the public sector; the union activists who have been fired, the victims of repression, need the solidarity of all trade union organizations whose fundamental strategic objectives are class conflict and grassroots participation in the struggles and in the resistance to union bureaucracies in the workplace.

There needs to be wide-ranging workers' solidarity with the categories and workers who are the most at risk and the most heavily-involved in responding to the attacks being carried out by the bosses, by governments and by State repression which no longer tolerates demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, slogans or even a little noise under the windows of power.

International class solidarity and conflict:

to give fired workers their jobs back,
to stop the closure of factories,
to halt the process where thousands of workers, male and female, are isolated from productive activity,
to restore the dignity of labour,
against the destruction of workers' rights and freedoms,
against the transformation of temporary reduced-pay lay-offs into a means of permanent redundancy,
against the process of turning workers expelled from the productive process into exchangeable goods and slaves,
for a new impetus in the wage struggles at FIAT by metalworkers and by all categories.

Labour Commission

Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici

24 July 2010