CHAPTER 16
TWENTY-THREE YEARS AT FIAT
Interview with FIAT worker Franco Platania,
1974
I started work at FIAT on 14 June 1950. It was very hard
to find work then – either you had to know somebody, or be related to somebody,
or fiddle your way in. I even went to see a union man on the Works Committee
(he was in the backhander business as well) but he told me: “There’s no point
in coming to see me. We don’t pull any strings here any more.” FIAT’s
recruiting policy was the cornerstone of the factory regime that had been
brought in by
My father worked as a shoemaker. In the shop next door
there was a watch repairer, who gave me the address of a priest who ran the
church in via Arsenale, to go and see him. “It’ll
cost you about a month’s wages, but he’ll get you sorted out alright.”
I was 23. I wanted to get married and settled down.
Straight after the War I took advantage of the Government’s “Decree No.8”, and
signed on with the “Folgore”. That
decree made it possible for an ex-partisan (aged between 18 and 20, with at
least 6 months of proven combat experience) to free themselves from any future
military obligations by signing on for one year. They were paid the
going rate for a volunteer. The idea of this move was so as to deal with all
the young cadres who had been active in the Resistance, and who were keeping up
their agitation – the sort of people who wanted no talk of a “return to
normal”.
FIAT: The first step towards the good life
The Folgore was full of
monarchists and fascists: very few of them had actually fought in the War –
most of them had holed up in
When I finished my service I turned my hand to all
sorts of jobs: washing dishes, working on a lathe in a toy company, or helping
my father out with his work. I also worked for the company that put the first
experimental TV relay mast up, on
FIAT, for me, meant economic security, the first step
towards the good life and the possibility of setting up a family. That was the
kind of stories that were going round in those days, and FIAT actually signed
on a fair number of young fellows who had been through some pretty militant
experiences. We were tired.
Selective recruitment and factory paternalism
So, I went to see the priest. He was a homosexual. He
took me into his office, tickling the palm of my hand as we went. He gave me a
note to give to Tamborlini, the head of the personnel
office. “Above all, don’t play with Communism,” he said, as I was leaving. In
return for his “intervention” I had to pay him a full month’s wages – 40,000
lire. “You understand, it is not for me... It is for
the poor of the parish.” That was the normal backhander in those days. And it
got me into FIAT, as an “assembly worker”, as it said on my clock card.
We were a group of about 15 or 20, all of us new
starters. We were met by a member of staff, who took charge of us and swept off
through the factory with us trailing behind him, at first perplexed, then
amazed, and finally thoroughly frightened. When we reached a section where one
of the new starters was to be employed, the man in charge called him out from
the group, and put him into his new section. By the time it came to the last of
us, he had been dragged halfway round the factory and was exhausted. I vividly
remember the fumes, the noise and the smell of welding. I very soon got used to
it, but at first I was in a sort of panic.
This was my first meeting with the factory, with the
machines. And with my colleagues on the job. For
anyone working in FIAT nowadays it’s hard to imagine the political outlook of
your workmates in those days. Their lack of politics was frightening. Most of
them were swedebashers.
The working class of the Resistance period at FIAT, the
working class of the period of insurrection and post-War reconstruction, had
been virtually rooted out by FIAT’s policies.
I remember one man from
Rabid anti-communism in the factory
Apart from that, there was nothing funny about FIAT.
The atmosphere was stifling. There was no political discussion – or when there
was, it was sure to be on the side of rabid anti-communism. I remember that
they used to quote from Campesino’s book “I Chose
Freedom”.
And they actually believed all that stuff about “Reds”
eating babies and murdering priests. This was a very rough time for Communist
Party members But nevertheless, they didn’t give up:
they fought the bosses’ intimidation, and they fought against the loss of heart
that was natural when the Party started to abandon them (this was about the
time the Party started dismantling its factory cells).
FIAT’S “One big happy family”
There was a collector called Parigi,
who was in charge of our whole section, and who was liked and respected by the
workers. Parigi controlled the speed of the line,
which was run by the sun! In other words, in the morning it went faster and in
the afternoon it went slower. He used his watch, together with a row of lines
chalked on the floor. If he saw that the line was going to fast, he would blow
his whistle, and the whole section would stop work. This was the man, together
with a few of his sidekicks, who had been pointed out to me as the ones “who
don’t give a toss for anything”. That was what the foreman had told me, and
there were three or four of them in all. Then there were the union people on
the Internal Committee, and those on the Works Committee. Mind you, the only
time you saw them was when they came haring down to tell Parigi
not to make so much trouble. The way Parigi treated
them was to spit on the floor and to turn his back on them. But comrades like
this were few and far between, and the foremen were always watching them, and
pointing them out to you with a kind of manic obsession – “Those people over
there are involved in politics.”
The foremen were the main instrument through which
After a while, you began to think of the foreman as a
friend – and that was where he had you. Like, if he asked you to stay on and
work overtime in the factory, it was no longer a foreman giving you an order,
but a friend asking you a favour. And often as not, you did it. They had other
tricks too. They created an atmosphere, and made you feel like a footballer,
always playing the match of your life. This was the Production Championship.
The foreman would come round trying to encourage a sort of team spirit, with
things like: “Those bastards on the other shift turned out 52 engnes instead of 50 yesterday. They’re trying to cause us
problems. Well, we’ll show them! This time we’ll turn out 56!” That was how
they put it, and very soon you’d have everyone slaving away to produce more and
outstrip “the other shift”.
First steps into political life
The atmosphere on the section was always tense, full of
suspicion and little intrigues. For instance, one day Neirano
sidled up to me and said in a low voice: “Look, if you keep your nose clean,
there’s a chance of a foreman’s job for you.” I thought this was a bit odd, so
I did a little inquiry on my section. It turned out he had said exactly the
same thing to 8 out of 25 of us. And in the end it was the son of one of the
general foremen that ended up getting the foreman’s job. Also, there was always
a sort of underhand traffic in merit money, bonuses, etc, that were handed out
surreptitiously. In the end everybody got the same, but the way they were
distributed meant that, at the given moment, they worked so as to divide us –
and you felt isolated, with a kind of helpless anger. The worst thing about it
was that you couldn’t see any way of changing this state of affairs.
We also had an anarchist comrade in the plant. His form
of protest was never to work on a Saturday. Since I was always looking for new
ways to fight, I asked him to put me in contact with some people from his
group, because their ideas interested me. Their office was in Corso Principe Oddone. I went there one time when they were having a
meeting. They were talking about arranging a collection for a comrade who had
tuberculosis. I had the impression that they were very good people, but that
working with them wouldn’t take things very much closer to making the
revolution. Also, for a while, I used to go down to the Socialist Party offices
in via Matteo : Pescatore. But these were the
kind of socialists who spent most of their time eating, drinking and singing.
International politics and factory issues
This was the period of the political strikes in
But what was most obviously missing was an overall
political discussion about internationalism. We were either for
Anyway, then we had the notorious period of
“Red-hunting”. They used to search you at the gates, and if they found a copy
of L’Unità [the CP paper] on you, you were sacked at once. One bloke on
my section used to come to work in a red shirt. The foreman “asked” him if he
could possibly change it, because he felt that wearing red was not good taste!
The metal-working section of the CGIL [Communist] union was dismantled (the
FIOM), the split in the unions had already occurred, and the company union
(SIDA) had already been created. At the elections in 1955 to elect the new
members to the Internal Commissions, the FIOM had lost its majority. The SIDA
bloke in those days was called Cottura. One day a
FIOM union official had to save this man Cottura from
a mass meeting of women who wanted to lynch him. But Cottura
had guts – he was willing to confront angry workers. You could say that he was
the best propagandist for
In those days there was no proper canteen. They had
just started digging the foundations for one. So as to get into the factory,
workers had to cross these trenches that were getting deeper and deeper every
day. This meant going down one side of the hole and clambering up the other
side. One day Cottura announced over the speaker
system (there were loudspeakers all through the factory) that thanks to his
action, the management had agreed to put a gangplank over the hole! Another
time a journalist from Italian radio arrived to interview the workers about
what they felt about work on an assembly line. It was Cottura
himself who gave the interview, together with two others, dressed in fancy
white overalls, which were brought up on the same wagon that brought the
journalists to the interview, and which, needless to say, had never been seen
before or since, on the lines.
Forced back into individualism
You were forced to be an individualist in that period,
to close in on yourself. As the days went by, you found that you were losing
your workmates, the comrades who could have helped you. Everyone talks about
the “political” sackings and the business about the “deportation” department –
the notorious Officina Stella Rossa
[Red Star Section]. This is the stuff that you usually find in the official
Left “histories” of FIAT, with the sackings of the members of the Internal
Commission, and the sackings of Amato and other politicos. But there was a
whole wave of sackings that were just as “political”, but which nobody
remembers: those dozens of workers who had been sacked for trying to fight the
way the bosses abuse their power.
Private battles for self-survival
In fact, if the foremen represented the paternalistic
side of
Another bloke went to see Trontoli,
one of the foremen, and said: “We can’t go on like this – the blokes are at
their limit.” Trontoli replied: “Carry on.” The lad
punched him in the face, and Trontoli scurried off,
spitting blood. Our friend went to his locker, took off his overalls and
changed into his normal clothes, sure that he was going to be sacked. But
nobody came. Trontoli had kept quiet about the
incident, so as not to jeopardise his career. But
these outbursts of revolt never managed to become a collective struggle, an
organised movement, at that time. “Every man for himself, and the devil take
the rest” was the attitude in those days.
At the collective level, the only way this revolt could
find an outlet was through sabotage. I remember the time they replaced
slot-head screws with the new star-slot screws. Using the new American
screwdrivers, they were very easy to screw in. All the work-rhythms were upset.
At that time there were a lot of screws in the cars that we were making. So as
to make up time the blokes used to bang them in like nails, with hammers. So
the General Foreman had a bright idea – he confiscated all the metal hammers
and replaced them with plastic hammers! That didn’t last long, though.
As for my own battles, they were always struggles that started
from my own particular situation. I was like the rest – I didn’t think much
about anybody else. I had moved from the assembly line to the inspection area,
where there were three inspectors and two repairmen. Soon after, there was a
restructuring, and they knocked out two of the men, leaving 3 of us with the
new grade of Inspector/Repairman. We were better paid than before, and
inspection was really all that we had to do. But we weren’t really sure whether
we should continue doing touching up, as before, or
whether we should just do inspection. So we demanded – and won – that in our
section we wouldn’t have to do more than 3 repair operations per car, and that
anything else would be done by another ad hoc section. That was OK. But for the
rest of the time I was mainly concerned to hide myself away in some easy little
number where I wouldn’t be wearing myself out day after day, and where I would
have more chance of resisting FIAT. Because I’d lost a good
number of comrades who simply hadn’t been able to stand the pace. They
arrived in the factory, stayed for a year at the most, and then left. They
couldn’t give a toss for the so-called high wages and
In those days I used to be mad about painting, and that
helped me to put up with life at FIAT. Then, in the factory, I used to try and
find any way possible to avoid work. I even signed up with the FIAT choir,
because it meant that I could get time off on a Saturday, to go and sing! Also,
I found a lot of little ways of getting one up on the foremen – like showing
off my culture in front of them. I used to read a lot in those days, and even
though I didn’t understand much of what I read, I’d study anything I could get
my hands on, especially art and literature. This was all part of my war. But I
couldn’t understand the Communist Party people in the factory. They made it a
point of honour never to be faulted in their work by
the foreman. Their idea was to do a good job of work, but as far as I was
concerned, this pride in the job was just a joke, and I made no secret of my
feelings in front of the foremen.
One time I got friendly with a bloke in the supplies
department. He had an office, with a sort of teleprinter.
He’d sit there in his white shirt, tie, and all the frills, feeding punch-cards
into this machine. I soon picked up what had to be done, and when he wanted to
go to the toilet, he’d call me to do his job for him. And on Mondays, he would
arrive regularly two hours late, knowing that I would fill in for him. This was
OK until one day a foreman caught me at it. All hell was let loose. They didn’t
say a word to me, but they gave my friend a real going-over: he had “debased”
his job; he had “trampled” the honour of his job; he
had “lost his credibility” in the eyes of the workers!
“Is it true that you want to strike?”
I used to study all sorts of ways to carry on my private
war with the foremen. I even bought myself a car, at a time when most of the
foremen used to come to work on scooters or mopeds. I’d arrive in the factory
in the morning and go round and park in the staff car park. And on my way to
work I’d go sailing past the foremen as they were pedalling
like mad on their mopeds. It was a real laugh. At that time I didn’t think too
much about politics. I used to vote Communist, and that was it. The main thing
in my mind was how to screw the foremen.
I was still at the Lingotto factory. We’d had a few
hold-ups because we were refusing to load cars onto the trains when it was
raining. The Company was only paying us flat rate, without the production
bonus. So, when payday came round one fellow said: “What we need here is a
strike”. I pricked up my ears at once. We talked about it, and I was chosen as
the one to go along and explain our grievances to the General Foreman, and to
explain that we were going on strike. So I called our foreman. “I would like to
speak with the General Foremen”. He didn’t even look at me. “He hasn’t got
time,” he said. So I said: “It’s about a strike.” That was the magic word. At
FIAT it had been 5 or 6 years since anybody had last dared to utter that word.
I was immediately summoned up to see the General. One
of the most organised details of
He sent me back down, and called in each member of my
section, one by one, up to his office. “Is it true that you are thinking of
taking strike action?” “What… us... oh no, not at all!”
And that was the end of our strike!
Then the trouble started for me. Every day it was the
same thing. The foreman would slide up to me: “You know, the Company is
thinking of making some manpower reductions. Sooner or later you’ll be out of
the gate. The best thing for you would be to leave now... find yourself another
job…” They were always trying tricks like that. Every day! I began to lose
patience. I started defending myself. I used to quote the Constitution, and
threatened to take them to court for “moral coercion”. (I didn’t have the first
idea what it meant, but it seemed to do the trick.) I behaved myself, and tried
to continue what was becoming increasingly my private war against FIAT.
The revival: 1962 – Piazza Statuto
The action of the lads during the strikes of 1962 gave
me a big lift, though. It was July, the 6th, 7th and 8th, and for me those days
are unforgettable, even though I found myself suddenly in the middle of that
struggle without the possibility of seeing it coming, or organising for it. I
remember that on the morning of the 6th I wasn’t very confident that the strike
would succeed. The days before had been more or less OK.
People stayed behind the gates, hesitating for quite a long while, but then, as
soon as one person walked out, everyone else followed.
On my way to work, I used to pass in front of the Materferro foundry plant, another FIAT establishment. That
morning I passed Materferro, which I thought was the
key point of that strike. There were a lot of people outside, a lot more than
on the previous days.
I arrived in via Nizza. At the end of the street it
looked like a great black mass. I could hardly believe it. As I got closer, I
could see more clearly: there was a huge crowd of workers blocking the Lingotto
gates. I had never seen so many workers taking action, and so much together.
FIAT had woken up: Agnelli and
As far as I was concerned, the strikes of 1962 and the
events of Piazza Statuto were still all in the
framework of my private war against FIAT. The worst thing I could think of was
to become active in the FIOM (metalworkers’ union). So I went to see Galassi, the FIOM representative for Lingotto.
[.…]
In those days, Sabatini, the UIL man, was always to be
seen walking round the factory in his black jacket, because he was a right
scab, and FIAT gave him free rein. But Galassi, on the
other hand, was stuck away in a comer of the factory, in charge of the hydrogen
bottle store. He had a book on the job, and every time he left the job he had
to write down the exact time and reason why he was away, so that the security
bloke always knew where to find him. Anyway, I saw Galassi
and I said: “I hear you haven’t been able to find anyone to check the ballot
papers for the Internal Commission elections, so I would like to offer my
services.” “Ballot papers!” he said, “I can’t even find anyone to stand as a
candidate! You’ll have to be a candidate.” This was how I ended up standing as
the FIOM candidate for the elections to the Internal Commission. This was no
great deal, but it was a sort of protest, and it certainly made the foreman
sick.
In the end I resigned. In 1966 I had a difficult family
situation, and one morning when they called me in for the umpteenth time and
suggested that I leave the factory, I said: “OK – find me another job and I’ll
go.”
Two days later I got my transfer papers to the
Mirafiori factory, to 85 Shop, the deliveries section. At Mirafiori there was a
new branch of the railway line built in to the south side of the plant, and all
car deliveries were passing through there. That was where I sat for 3 years,
waiting for the events of 1969, with a little desk, an assortment of potted
plants, and a pile of song-sheets in my desk for me to study, as I lived the
quiet life of one who thought he had won his personal war against the Boss and
against Society.
The explosion begins: building solidarity
When the explosion happened in 1969 – the explosion of
the workers on FIAT’s assembly lines – the only inkling we had in 85 Shop was
the fact that cars seemed to be coming down the line only few and far between.
Only a few were coming down, and they were all dented and botched up, in a hell
of a state. So we began to ask ourselves: “What’s going on further up the
line?” Already in the months preceding that spring there had been all the signs
of something happening. The number of layabouts who had been gradually
transferred down the line till they finished up with us in 85 Shop – i.e. at
the end of the production line – was noticeably increasing. But we weren’t
able, for the moment, to place this kind of information in a more general context.
But the almost total paralysis of production, on the other hand, was something
that spoke for itself. We began to find out more, about the strikes in the
Auxiliary Departments, and the chaos on the lines. At that particular moment,
it was the internal drivers who were taking action.
Six or seven months previously we had presented a
petition to the General Foreman. asking for all of us
to be upgraded to Grade 2. It was a ridiculous way to fight, but at that moment
it seemed the only way to do it. Anyway, we decided to pick up that demand
again, but to push it in a new way – taking account of all the new experiences
of struggle that we had developed since that time. We drew up a set of demands.
We wanted Grade 2 for all of us, not just for blockers (those who clamp the
cars once they’re loaded onto the rail wagons), but the drivers as well; a wage
increase for workers involved in preparation, and automatic upgrading for them
after 6 months. So as to be more effective, we decided not to start our action
straight away; with the chaos that was going on at that time, the management
wouldn’t even have noticed us.
So, we waited till the stacker-truck drivers finished
their action, and we started ours straight after. Of course, the whole business
of Grade 2 for all was not as simple as it sounds when I’m telling it like
this. There were a lot of problems. For myself, I was already on Grade 2, and
that gave me a lot of credibility among the lads. But in our section we also
had Boccia, an old bloke with a long trade union
experience. He was much harder to persuade than anyone else. He believed in the
myth of professionalism. He was classified as a “glass-blower” – a relic of the
FIAT of earlier days, a leftover of the processes of production that had
nothing to do with the political reality that we were living through at that
time.
But Boccia had a lot of
prestige among the lads. You could always discuss with him, and he always used
his head. He was far from stupid. But the trouble was that he had a daughter
who worked for the CGIL (the communist union federation) and every night when
he went home, she would brainwash him, and that meant that we’d have to start
on him all over again the next morning. And the lads weren’t sure who to follow
– Boccia, or me. The important thing, though, was
that in that period, all our section meetings ended in unanimous decisions.
This was how we built the solidarity among ourselves in 85 Shop,
that enabled us to resist all the employer’s manoeuvres that came later.
[.…]
Anyway, after having decided on our form of action, we
wanted to do a leaflet so as to let everyone know what action we were taking,
and why.
We had begun to see the students on the gates of the
factory en masse right from the days of 1968. In the strike over pensions, the
strike over parity for workers in the South.
Union and students: printing the leaflet
We’d always been struck by their presence on picket
lines. If ever there was a strike, somebody would always say: “Let’s hope some
of the students are there today.” We thought they were pretty militant. We
liked the way they faced up to the police, the general way they reacted. The
first encounter of workers and students, the first real meeting was spontaneous
and full of mutual confidence. It was only afterwards that the Communist Party
started going round saying things like: “Who’s paying them…?” “They’re just middle
class…” etc.
Anyway, in the spring of 1969 we realised that the
resources that the students had, could be of use to us. We had seen that their
leaflets were always discussing the daily struggles in the plant. So,
naturally, we had the idea of going to them to get our leaflet done. We
collected up 12,000 lire among ourselves to pay for the paper and the
duplicating, and we went to see the students. Boccia
wanted us to go to the union as well. That was OK by us, because all we wanted
was that our leaflet was going to be printed the way we wanted it. So we
decided to give 6,000 lire to the union and 6,000 to the students, and we had
both of them do the leaflet.
So, we went to see Longo of the FIOM. It was a
disaster. We thought he’d be really happy to see us, considering the years that
he had been going on at us to pull ourselves together and get organised. This
was just what we were doing now. Happy to see us? Not
likely!
[.…]
“What! You too? This is too
much! Grade 2 for all – no, you’re not on. It took me years to get to Grade 2 –
I had to lay eggs to get it!” “So what, chickens lay eggs too!” “But at least I
did it waiting my turn…” “So what – chickens do it using their arses!”
This whole episode was a great disillusionment for Boccia,
despite his trade union past and his daughter in the CGIL. “They’ve lost their
heads,” he muttered sadly.
The next day we saw our two leaflets: the one that the
students had done was just as we wanted it – saying that we would have an
8-hour strike. And the one that the Union had done, saying
that we would only be out for 4 hours. From that moment on, Boccia came regularly to the meetings that we started to
hold regularly with the students in a meeting hall in the
The struggles in No. 85 Shop
In the course of our struggles in 85 Shop I was
beginning to be quite well-known. People would refer to me as “Franco 85”.
There was a good feeling in the Shop, we were fighting to be upgraded, and the
lads were confident of winning. Our struggle had been going on for about 10
days, when we had an idea. In our work contracts we knew that our job
definition wasn’t “driver” – which would have been an accurate description of
what we were supposed to do – but “materials handler”. In
other words, storeman. So we decided that we
would fight FIAT by working according to our job definitions. If we weren’t
“drivers”, then we wouldn’t drive the finished cars out of the factory onto the
car-trains: we would just push them by hand. It was total chaos. It took four
or five of us at a time to push the cars. Very soon the yard outside 85 Shop
was overflowing with cars. They were even piling up on the grass verges by the
flowerbeds. The management went berserk! First of all they tried to bring some
scabs out of 82 Shop to do the work, but we beat them up and magically they all
decided they didn’t want to work in 85 Shop. Then the management had to give
in. One morning a management bloke arrived with someone from the
From this moment on it was open war between the bosses
and me. And it was no longer just a private war between me and the foremen. It
wasn’t just a matter of making fun of them. Now we had to destroy the very
basis of the authority that they had in the factory – i.e. the unlimited powers
that management gives to them to act against workers and to do just what they
like. Of course, they tried to get me sacked, or at least to get me out of the
section. But it was fantastic – once they had lost their authority, it was as
if they had become naked, as if they had lost their whole personality at the
same time as losing their power.
For a while they put me on as a relief man. I took
advantage of this by moving up and down the lines, and
making links between the different sections on strike or in dispute (there were
a lot during that period). It was through this that I got to know Luciano Parlanti, Zappala and a whole lot of other comrades. One time my
foreman surprised me in the Body Plant when I shouldn’t have been there. He
called me up, and I was immediately transferred to Heat Treatment. The word got
round the factory within minutes. Five minutes later the 5 loading lines in 85
Shop were at a standstill. And within minutes my transfer was withdrawn.
By this time 85 Shop was becoming a real thorn in
Agnelli’s side. The Company decided to dismantle the whole shop. The word got
around. An engineer, who was also a comrade, came to tell us what the bosses
were planning. They wanted to hand over all transport operations (including
loading the trains in the sidings) to a contractor to do the work. We very soon
had confirmation of this when we saw the first new faces of the workers
employed by the contractor. They arrived on the scene, and at first they were
only used in little jobs like sorting out keys, sealing bootlids,
etc. But you didn’t have to be a genius to know that this was the thin end of
the wedge.
So we began to have meetings, every day at the end of
the shift, in the bar next to Gate 0. After about a month we
had met the first (5 or 6) lads who had already been transferred out of 85 Shop.
They had all been sent down to the Press Shop. And they had accepted transfers
from 85 Shop because the Company had promised them a better job!! That was
enough for us. We decided to start action right away, without leaving it so
long that there would no longer be any point in fighting. This time we didn’t
even bother to go and negotiate with the management. We just stopped work, just
like that. Mirafiori came to a standstill. For three days we were on strike.
There were 9,000 cars arriving from Rivalta and Lingotto to be loaded onto the
trains. That would have lessened the damage that we wanted to do to FIAT. So I
went and lay down on the feeder-ramp that the cars drive up onto the trains.
The drivers, who had come from the Rivalta plant, asked me: “Are you going to
get up from there?” I said “No”. So they said: “That’s it. That means we can’t
go on loading”. So they got back into their transporters and left: that stopped
the cars leaving Rivalta and Lingotto as well.
Our demand was that 85 Shop should not be closed down,
and that if closure was really unavoidable, the Company should guarantee all of
us jobs where the effort required would be the same as the drivers’ jobs that
we had held previously. Three days later, someone arrived from the
Next day we were no longer drivers. They stuck us up in
the canteen. We stayed there a fortnight, playing cards. Agnelli preferred to
pay us for doing nothing rather than have us still in our old section. In our
place he signed a ragbag of new drivers. One lot crashed a load of new cars, as
well as pinching tyres and slipping them out through the factory railings. It
was a disaster! And we had a great time watching it all from the windows of the
canteen. FIAT had pulled us out of 85 – but now they didn’t know where to put
us. There were about 60 of us camping in that canteen. We held a meeting where
we decided that none of us would accept a new job without first discussing it
with everybody else.
The Personnel began to send us, ten at a time, to jobs
in other sections. In the evening we would all meet up to discuss our
experiences. That lasted for a month. All of us – in fact we were about 70 in
number – systematically refused any job that FIAT gave us, and we protected
ourselves by simply referring to our “constitutional charter”: the agreement
that FIAT had signed, guaranteeing us all new jobs with no more physical effort
than we had to exert in 85 Shop. Our conversations went like this: “You know
what! They tried to get me on the Roundabout. But I told them that I stopped
playing on roundabouts when I was a kid” Or: “They wanted me to lug castings
around the place. I refused because they weighed 30 kilos apiece”... “Did you
weigh them?”... “Don’t be daft. It was written on the box.”
This was a great time for us. Everyone knew us as the
“85 Gang”. We used to stroll around the factory – and it was then that I really
began to understand FIAT’s production lines. I was able to learn a tremendous amount
– both technically and politically. For us it was an education in struggle, a
once in a lifetime experience and an education – thanks to our struggle, and
much to FIAT’s despair. We had the chance to follow, in the heart of the
factory, all the struggles that were taking place; we were able to study what
the comrades were doing; and we helped to spread the word from section to
section about what everyone was doing, the initiatives they were taking, etc.
And all this was during a period of fantastic struggle at FIAT.
After a month, the group began to break up, Boccia accepted a cushy job as
a storesman; some people left; a fair number ended up
in the despatch department, 44 Shop, where the work
is pretty easy. All that was left was me and seven others, and we carried on
systematically rejecting every new offer of work that FIAT came up with. That
lasted for another three months.
Theoretically I had also been transferred to 44 Shop.
But of course the last thing the foremen wanted was to have me down there – so
they tried to palm me off onto another section. The beauty of it was that none
of the other foremen wanted me either, and always made sure that they gave me
the hardest job around, so that I would refuse to stay there. They sent me down
to 52 Shop and tried to offer me a job on the Roundabout. I didn’t even bother
to look at the job – I just chatted with a couple of the lads, and wandered off
again. Then they took me down to 32 Shop and stuck me in front of a gigantic
transfer machine, with sparks flying out from all sides. I was on the way to
see the foreman to tell him that he wouldn’t get me on that thing if he paid me
– and I found that he’d already written my letter of transfer to 44 Shop. Back
to 44 again!
I used to hang around the Personnel Office, waiting for
them to send me off on a job somewhere. But sometimes I just got tired waiting.
I’d find out where there was an interesting dispute, and go to see what was
happening.
I felt the birth of a possibility of change
Then we got a new workplace – me and the seven other
comrades – in the corridor in 44 Shop. We used to sit around on the benches
there, waiting. A while afterwards, they asked us to move out into the yard.
The weather was still fine, and it was very pleasant sitting around there.
However, autumn came early in
Finally 44 Shop offered me a job. I accepted it, and
went and worked there until I was finally sacked by FIAT.
The time I moved there was October/ November 1969. The
Hot Autumn had already started at FIAT – since the strikes of 32 Shop, that had started in September. From that moment my
personal biography loses all interest, as far as my individual motivations are
concerned. I joined a communist organisation, Lotta Continua. The important
moments of my life tended to become one with the collective moments of struggle
that were being shared by the whole working class of FIAT. I felt that every
day, as I took on increased political responsibilities, I also took on a new
dimension as a human being. I felt the birth of a possibility of change, the
birth of organisation. This gave me confidence, and it gave confidence to the
other comrades as well. When FIAT finally sacked me in July 1973, it was no
longer the individualist shit-stirrer of those far-distant years of the 1950s
that they were sacking, but a communist militant who, in the political struggle
within the factory, had been able to take on revolutionary tasks and
responsibilities.
Interview with Franco Platania
_______________________________________
Translated
by Ed Emery
Extracted from: THE BOOK OF FIAT: Insurrection, insubordination,
occupation and revolutionary politics at the FIAT motor company – 1907-1982
Published:
Red Notes / May Day Rooms
First
published in 2020