Ninth chapter The assembly
Comrades, what has emerged from the struggle at Fiat is above all workers’ autonomy, workers resisting every type of union mediation. They have autonomously organised the form of the struggle, they have autonomously established its aims. And on this basis they have started to build an autonomous organisation that will allow them to take the struggle forward. Let’s remember that this is the fifth week of the struggle at Fiat. What has emerged from this struggle above all is the workers’ demand for unity, meaning: the claim for equal wage increases for all and the desire to overcome the divisions by category and position allowance that the boss and the union have introduced into the wage structure.
There has been a continual attempt by the unions to extinguish, to circumscribe and isolate this struggle which has primarily been articulated in negotiations at the level of the section and the workshop, until we arrived at the worthless agreement of a couple of days ago covering all of Fiat. This bullshit agreement has developed at the level of the enterprise the attempts that were made at the level of the workplace, which is to say: increases determined by the wage structure, which they maintain unaltered. Which is to say: nearly all of the increases in the variable part of the wage, position allowances and so on. What’s more the workers’ demand for second category for all has resulted in the introduction of the super third category by the union. A phoney category that is no more than the 17 lire increase camouflaged under the name of category and that increases the number of existing categories from 5 to 6.
Comrades, it seems clear that the working class of Fiat has refused the union’s bullshit agreement everywhere. The struggle is carried forward, new struggles have been opened and those started before continue. Now we need a certain foresight in assessing what other means the boss might use to extinguish our struggle and above all to mystify its content. We can foresee some of these measures here, reprisals, the shutdown of Fiat, forced leave, bringing forward the negotiations and the contractual agreements and so on. And this assembly will also deal with evaluating the significance of this struggle, in regards to the national agreements. The day’s last point of order will consider the general strike called by the unions for next Thursday. We can start the discussion immediately.
I would like to say, we have seen that with 45 days’ struggle we have got 17 lire. We don’t know what to do with it but we’ve got it. If we hadn’t gone on strike for 45 days we wouldn’t have managed even this. Going on like this we will be able to play a big role in the national agreements. Because the organisation that we are creating now will be important when strikes for the agreements are being considered. Then there’s another thing I wanted to say. It’s important to force their hand with the struggle in the coming days because Agnelli has been caught unprepared and hasn’t had time to build up his stocks. In October any moron would know we were going to strike. Maybe a week, 15 days, 20 days. And Agnelli, who is not a moron, would know it too, and so would have built up his stocks.
If we pull the leash too tight, if he has threatened to stand us down now but hasn’t, in October he’ll close the gates and stand us down because he doesn’t give a shit about us. This is the moment when the market demands the greatest production. It is the moment when Agnelli needs us the most and it is the moment to strike. Unite comrades, I don’t know if there is anyone here from my workshop, I don’t care about arselickers. But tonight I have plastered the toilets with leaflets. If anyone hasn’t been to read them yet, go and read them now. The struggle at Fiat must become the Vietnam of the bosses in Italy. Applause.
Listen comrades. Yesterday they gave us letters, notices of suspension. This morning we heard about 12 dismissals, I have the letter in my pocket, I’ll show you. In relation to the grave matters disclosed under your responsibility on the day of the 24th inst and already charged to you we hereby advise you of your dismissal, under article 38, section b of the standing national work agreement. You are requested therefore to make arrangement for the collection of your work documents and any remaining entitlements from our Administration office after 9 July 1969. Yours faithfully. Now all of us from workshop 25 agree that if we don’t all return to work, including the twelve who were dismissed, here they are coming in now the others who have had the letter, then the strike will continue.
But there’s one thing. Outside I met a union official, here at the university, and a few guys pulled me away, because I wanted to argue over what I told him: I want to meet, you and me. You’re from the union, OK. We put forward our conditions, fifty lire. But, he said, when you went on strike all together, you didn’t call me. But there was no need to call you because we can do things for ourselves. You’ve made a mistake, says he. But now, these twelve dismissals, what’s to be done? Then he said he didn’t know. I’ll tell you what’s to be done. You’re from the union, so call all the workers at Fiat to go on strike and the rest all together. Because if there’s another dismissal, what, will you get the strike going? Or how will it be done? He didn’t answer.
Then I said, if at a certain point I take responsibility for the struggle, for my whole workshop, then all the other workshops have to join the strike with us. I went to 24 to ask them to be part of the strike. They said: No, because the PSIUP23 is imposing it on us. This fucking PSIUP is giving me the shits. However you look at it, it’s like this: if those of us who were dismissed don’t go into the factory, the workshop where I am, at least, won’t go to work. Prolonged applause. Comrades, if signor Agnelli takes it on himself to dismiss ten, tomorrow he won’t dismiss ten but five hundred. He’ll dismiss a thousand, two thousand and kick us all out. But he is not the boss. We, the workers, are. While we in the factory earn a hundred thousand lire a month, signor Agnelli earns two hundred billion with our blood, it’s us who spill blood. Let’s strike inside and out, let’s strike. Applause.
I would like to speak about Thursday’s strike. We know that this strike has been called by the union in an attempt to take back control of our struggle. We have to try to exploit this strike over evictions or whatever it is in our own way, we mustn’t let the union take the initiative. So it’s about taking our strike, our struggle, outside and that’s why we have to organise ourselves. In the three days that we have let’s try to organise ourselves, team by team, section by section, workshop by workshop. And let’s try to have a march big enough to get what we want, if not with words then with force. Applause.
Comrades, workers won’t go into the streets to express their indignation if they are always controlled within the ambit of the party and the union. But they will go because they are fed up with the state of affairs and dare to speak their minds, dare to hit not just Agnelli but also the pseudo-revolutionary parties and their falsifying positions. Thunderous applause. Comrades, some of you may have doubts about the risks, about the fact that there could be serious clashes at the march. But we say right away that the march is not a provocation but that it has the job of explaining the struggle in the factory to the city. To let it be known what has been going on in the workshops for more than a month and why. And that all the newspapers have done everything to avoid mentioning it. So with this we must let all Torino know that we won’t stop for twenty or even thirty lire. We want what we have asked for and they must give it to us. Applause.
Voice from the floor: I want to propose to the workers who are planning to go on strike to include in the claims the re-hiring of the workers who were dismissed. First thing: we have to tell Agnelli that the struggle at Fiat won’t be neutered with an increase of 17 lire. Second: that we won’t be neutered even with the dismissal of the workers’ vanguard. All workers must now know that the united response to these reprisals isn’t a means of defending the comrade who has been defeated. It’s a means to strike right at the bosses’ power. It is a means of saying that we are fighting not so much for the dismissed worker as against the current system in the factory in Torino. We say openly that we will not allow dismissals. Repeated applause.
Comrades, I would just like to advise the comrades here that the struggle at Mirafiori continues, and on Tuesday at half-past five workshop 56 will go on strike with the same demands made by workshop 54 and the other workshops, 50 lire plus 50 lire and the categories. We will present our demands on Monday morning, giving them only 24 hours. Seeing as the testing workshop and workshop 19 are going on strike, we are aiming to go on strike on the same day. For anyone who doesn’t know, if there is anyone from workshop 56 here, you are asked to get together with the others, because we are doing it. They think we’re dickheads, because we’ve never been on strike, now we hope to be able to do something, too. That’s all.
Comrades, it appears that from July 1 bread will cost twenty lire more and cigarettes 50. Newspapers have already gone up, the landlords want to raise rents and they are kicking us out. Everything has gone up, every product, even Fiat cars have gone up. And us, 17 lire an hour. But 17 lire is useless to us when everything is going up. We don’t care a bit about the increase in the production bonus. I heard that right now we’ll be paid at base rates because there’s no production, because the daily quota of cars determined by the management isn’t being produced. And I asked why. I was told: Because you work for piece rates. But who offered these piece rates to me? No one. I don’t know anything about it, and just like me neither do the other workers. It was those well-known intermediaries between the workers and the management, the unions. We want what we have demanded, with force.
I was also told that now we should be satisfied with 17 lire if we want to conclude the agreement. The famous agreement that is supposed to be signed in October. Wastepaper, because we won’t sign it. They’ve made it clear they want us to be calm, but that’s not possible, we have needs, we need money. We have to have it, and no one can put a spoke in our wheels. They said that second category isn’t possible after six months of employment, because it would send the boss broke. But that is exactly what we want, who cares if the boss goes broke, him and his shitty factory. Applause.
Comrades, the situation in Torino and surrounds is a setback for the bosses. Fiat lets us live, Fiat kills on the lines. Outside the factory, you want lodgings, then you work at Fiat, room and board makes 30,000 lire a month plus expenses for electricity etc. Exploited inside the factory and out. I work in workshop 25, which seems like a prison, actually a cell, where you find every type of lowlife. Production at Fiat: ten workers absent and in the end you still make the quota. Who suffers? We do. Transport more and more expensive. Who suffers? We do. No one cares and we suffer, we are democratically slaves of the boss.
Let’s fight, with the good, with the bad, but let’s fight all out. We have negotiated from 10 per cent to around 12 per cent. How was it done? We have to fight, fight, fight for more money and less work. We need to abolish capitalism and be treated like men, not beasts of burden. Capitalism is a rotten and broken system. No one can stand it any more. The young reject it, even the young bourgeois students who we see here among us. And all the workers know on how much suffering and how much injustice it has fattened itself. Keep at it, stick to the struggle, comrades, don’t be fooled by the bosses, don’t let yourselves be fooled by the union. Applause.
Comrades, earlier I heard about comrade Emilio, who got a beating. I heard the day before from a fascist who works with my wife that signor Agnelli offered thousands for the fascists to provoke any of the groups gathered near the gates. I thought it was just talk, but knowing that they gave Emilio a beating, I think this is happening. We know they gave Emilio a beating and they’ll give others beatings. But the best thing is this, that Agnelli has finished using his tactics, his so-called modern and democratic tactics. In the past he had the unions as his lackeys but now they’ve bombed completely. They’re not there now, they don’t know what to do, they’re no use to him any more.
Now he’s trying to get tough, which is capital’s last resort. I mean, when you take a hit, at first you try to play fair. Then when he sees that he can’t take it he rounds up the various action squads.24 Well, he’ll get it too. What happens, happens. We reply to Agnelli that it is not so much our struggles that strengthen our will, but he himself who has shown us that he’s on the ropes. So I say this, whatever he does now he can’t break the workers’ will. He can’t kid himself, he already knows it very well. Workers are developing another mindset, they understand what they have to do. Maybe only a few, maybe a vanguard, but that is the important thing. I don’t speak from others’ experience. In four years I have changed completely, before I had what you might call a petit bourgeois mindset, I believed that by being good you would get everything.
Today I am, let’s say, a revolutionary. They call us that, or cinesi,25 they don’t even know themselves. Anyway, I wanted to say, there will be provocations at the march, but we will march all the same. I say no one can stop us now. And there’s another thing: we don’t criticise the Communist Party just for the sake of criticising it. It’s logical that the revolution won’t happen tomorrow or the day after, but I do say this: the worker’s mindset is too advanced now and the Party is trying to hold it back. It’s logical that we need to take one step at a time, but ultimately, when there’s the base, when there’s the mass pushing from below, that says everything is a mess, in a disruptive manner, the Party keeps holding back, and the union too.
And they keep saying: an apolitical union, as a comrade pointed out earlier. But I reply. Are you taking the piss? Do you really think we’re still morons who believe that the union can possibly be apolitical? But that’s how completely fucked they are now. They’re mercenaries, and they’ll be treated like mercenaries. So carry on like that, you unionists. Take the bosses’ money, your time will come. Then see, we’ll make you a nice casket. Applause. Agnelli is on the ropes, capitalism in its phase of development is on the ropes, all our enemies are on the ropes. So we’ll continue the struggle and we will never stop, never. Let Agnelli and all his worms be warned. Long applause.
Comrades, as you all know every day the percentage of absences at Fiat is extremely high. It’s people who can’t take the murderous work rates imposed by the bosses any more. It’s people staying at home to preserve their own physical existence. It’s a constant flight from productive work. It’s about the right to be healthy, of struggles against harm. But that’s not to say that the only question is that work is harmful. The immigration of young people from the south to Fiat has gone on at an increasing rate in recent months. The constant resignations by workers who no longer want to suffer at Fiat, and the sackings of workers who are absent too often is a given. All of this suits Fiat because the new workers get a lower wage for the first four years of exploitation in the factory.
Add to this the vicious circle that takes almost your whole wage away. The young immigrants who go back and forth between the trattoria and the rooming house. Six or seven years ago you could save money to repay your debts from moving north and send money orders home to the south. The real wage at Fiat has gone backwards in the past few years. This is the reason for our strike for Battipaglia, why Battipaglia was the end of the meridionalist politics of the DC and the PCI in the south, of the state and the monopolies, the chance for a political strike against Fiat and the state’s planning.
As far as Thursday’s strike goes, it wasn’t the unions who realised that the workers couldn’t cope with the rents any more. It was the workers with their acts of rebellion, outside every union and political line, who showed they’d had it up to here with increases in the cost of living and in rents. And that at a certain point they can no longer be satisfied with the starvation wages that you get today. We demand a guaranteed wage, we demand to be paid according to our needs, whether we are working or whether we are unemployed. Applause.
Comrades, now after all these weeks of strikes in which we have brought the bosses to their knees, everyone tells us not to overdo it. The unionists tell us in the factories, the newspapers tell us outside. That if things go on like this there will be a crisi
s, that we must be careful because all of this lost production is destroying the Italian economy. And then we’ll all be worse off, there will be unemployment and hunger. But it doesn’t really seem like that to me. Let’s leave aside the fact that, as the previous comrade said, if the bosses’ economy crashes we don’t give a shit. In fact, we’d love it.
Nothing is truer, but there’s another thing. And that is that we don’t give a shit because we know that as long as nothing changes it’s us who are worse off. Isn’t it us who always pay the highest price in every struggle? Comrades, I’m from Salerno, and I have done every kind of work in the south as well as the north and I have learned one thing. That a worker has only two choices: a gruelling job when things are going well or unemployment and hunger when they go badly. I don’t know which of the two is worse. But anyway, it’s not as if a worker can decide for himself, it’s always the boss who decides for him.
When we’re pissed off because we just can’t take it anymore it’s useless coming and begging us to go back to work. Moralising about how we’re all one country, with common interests, that everyone has his role to play and his duty and all of that. That the stomach cannot eat if the arm no longer works and so the whole body dies. So they threaten us and beg us to go back to work because if we don’t it will be worse for us too. But it’s not like that, because as I said earlier from our point of view as long as they have the power, they’re killing us either way, whether we work or not.
We Want Everything Page 13