CHAPTER 33
WOMEN WORKERS MARCH AT FIAT-
MIRAFIORI
This morning the women who work in the Mirafiori Body
Plant (assembly of FIAT models 127, 131 and 132) met in their changing rooms at
the start of the shift and decided to take strike action over the problem of
showers, changing lockers and hygiene services. These are utterly inadequate,
given the large numbers of women workers who have been taken on as new starters
recently.
More than a thousand of them marched through the
factory, heading for the main Administration block – to the surprise and
amazement of the male workers. The initiative was taken in advance of a
similar protest that was to have been organised by the Works Committee for next
Wednesday, and it was completely spontaneous.
At 10.00am another element was added to the picture:
the management laid off the whole of the Assembly area for the 127, 131 and
132, following a strike of a small section of workers in Final Trim. They had
stopped in protest against FIAT’s demands for overtime working.
At least 3,000 workers immediately set off in a march
towards the Administrative block in Corso Agnelli. Since it proved impossible
to break down the steel gates there, they set up a road block across Corso
Agnelli and Corso Marconi.
After a while about a hundred workers managed to get
in, but they did not reach the management. Then, at around 12.00am, about 500
workers tried to get in, by going through the canteen. Faced with the umpteenth
steel gate in their way, they decided to concentrate on eating, at FIAT’s
expense. Food was taken from the canteen and distributed among the workers so
that they could spend the period of lay-off enjoying a picnic on the grass.
A FLM trade union official observed, timidly, that
this form of struggle was “a bit unorthodox”, but his words went unheeded.
[Translated from Lotta Continua, 1 May 1979]
_______________________________________
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