CHAPTER 37
INTERVIEW WITH A FIAT WORKER:
ORGANISING WORKERS’ AUTONOMY
Red Notes: At this moment the trade unions are negotiating a new
national contract for the metalworking and engineering sector. Could you
explain to us what this contract means for workers in
Marco: We have done an analysis of this question, and I should
say that before we discuss the point reached by the negotiations, we should
outline what this contract means. We, as comrades, the old vanguards and the
new vanguards of the FIAT motor company, have analysed
this contract as a watershed event, an event of historic importance for Italian
workers in general, and for FIAT workers in particular. It has to be seen in
the light of the workers’ struggles of the Hot Autumn of 1969. We say that the
present contract negotiations, as regards the platform of demands that is being
put forward, are no longer a working class initiative. They are in fact an
employers' initiative, where the employers are moving to regain the ground that
they lost during the hard-fought struggles (and the progressive objectives)
that the workers carried forward in the struggles of 1969, 1970, 1971.
Sacrifices for the workers
Right from the start we have repeatedly said that the
union platform is a platform of yet more sacrifices for the workers – and
therefore an attempt to regain power, not only by FIAT, but also by the
employers in general. For example, if we look at the wage increases that are
being asked for by the trade unions, they simply confirm what we comrades have
been saying all along – that this is a platform of workers’ sacrifices. We say
that the proposed 30,000 lire increase [£17.60 per month] will go nowhere near
making up for inflation (i.e. the attack on wage levels) in recent years. It
will also go nowhere near making up the inflation that has been built in with
the Equo Canone [“Fair
Rent”] law, which was promoted in Italy by the forces of the pseudo-Left –
namely the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the trade union organisations themselves – organisations
which still, today, wave their flags as so-called spokesmen of the working
class, but which, so far from being spokesmen of the working class, are in fact
the co-managers of the power of the employers.
Restructuring of FIAT’s
production
Those organisations have
acted as the transmission belt by which the employers can get over this famous
“crisis”. And now we should say something about this crisis. It has been a
crisis where both large and small employers, with the sweat and blood of the
workers, have enlarged their profits and amassed their capital. And they have
not used these profits in terms of investments in
For example, the FIAT factory in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where FIAT now manufacture all the
engines for the FIAT 127, also now produces whole cars – the 127 and the 1050.
This production takes place under the strangest agreements, by which, for example,
I am speaking from my own experiences of the period I
was working at FIAT-Spa Stura, where FIAT build
trucks (the 190, the 170 and the 82). In this plant, from 1974-77, the employer
undertook a very large programme of restructuring,
especially as regards the machinery in the plant. In the case of the V8 engine,
for example, which is used for the FIAT 190 truck, a number of super-automated
numerical control transfers were installed. These transfers machined the
cylinder block of the engine. These very large transfer machines were able to
replace hundreds of workers, with a machining process that was completely
automatic. Quality control is built into these machines, making them capable of
a minute control of the production process, and for FIAT this has meant the
elimination of those small acts of sabotage that are carried out, not in organised terms, but by individual workers on a daily
basis.
This restructuring took place not only at the
technological level. It also happened through a saturation of work times, i.e.
by making each worker work harder. For example, one worker was expected to run
more than one machine tool at a time. This involved coupling together two or
more machine tools into one job specification – and I can best show you the
result of this policy by referring to an accident that took place as a result
of it.
The effect of job rationalisation
Up until a few years ago, one worker would work
exclusively on one machine tool. But today the FIAT management – and thus the
Work Study Department – have planned a series of small modifications to
machinery in the plant, in such a way as to eliminate any dead time. This means
eliminating non-productive time – cutting down the time when the machine is not
working and the worker can rest. So, the Work Study Department redesigned
certain jobs in such a way that, while one machine was operating, the worker
would be loading another piece onto another neighbouring
machine.
Photo: CARTOON
Then he would turn, to take the first piece off the
first machine, when it was finished. As a result of this, one worker lost an
arm inside one of these machines. He was taken to hospital, but he died a couple
of days later. This death is laid at FIAT’s door. But
the most horrific thing about these events – a fact that was described in
leaflets that the comrades put into the plants – was that at the funeral of
this dead comrade you saw the FIAT management present, together with members of
the union side of the Works Committee. After the funeral, the management and
the union side went off drinking together in a restaurant.
I shall now continue with the question of FIAT as a
multinational firm engaged in a process of restructuring. The FIAT motor
company is today trying to eliminate those minimal levels of autonomous organisation that exist within the factory. They are
seeking to eliminate those jobs and sections where vanguard workers have
succeeded in becoming a point of reference for other workers in struggle.
Decentralisation of production
In the case of FIAT-Spa Stura,
for example, the vast majority of machining jobs have, been transferred out of
the factory. The number of workers in the plant has been reduced by
approximately 60 per cent. Some of this work has been transferred to France,
and some has been shifted to more or less “peaceful” parts of Italy. This is
what we call the decentralisation of production. In
To illustrate the attitude of these French workers, I
would like to give some examples from the experience of workers from my own
section at Spa-Stura, who had been transferred to
Photo: LAVORO NERO
Now, having finished with this question of Spa-Stura – which is only a small part of what has been
happening all over FIAT – I want to go back to the question of the present engineeering workers’ contract. You asked me what point we
have reached in the contract negotiations. Well, here is a difficulty. To
answer that question would mean to play into the hands of those people who are
trying to make out this contract – and its demands – as something progressive,
as something that is going to change the life and conditions of the workers.
But this is absolutely not true. The TV and the press have been carrying out a
big propaganda drive, and the employers have been acting out a big “rock-hard
resistance” to these contract demands, as if the trade unions were really
carrying out the demands of the Italian workers today. But they are not
carrying out those demands. I am not trying to avoid the question of the
contents of the contract etc – but as I said at the start, this is not a
contract that is based on the needs of the workers. When all is said and done,
the workers knew, right at the start of these negotiations, what the outcome
was going to be. It’s going to mean more mobility for workers. It’s also going
to mean agreement – or at least an understanding – on how to deal with
absenteeism, which is a big problem for the employers at present. The mobility
is perhaps one of the more important aspects – something that FIAT has been
moving on for 3-4 years now.
Reduction of hours and wage differentials
As regards the reduction of hours, we feel that this
question, in the terms in which the trade union organisation
is carrying it forward, will not be capable of covering the number of
unemployed that exist in
Another crucial question in the contract is the question
of wage differentials. This is important in the light of the struggles that the
workers have carried out in recent years. In recent years they have aimed to
reduce the wage differentials between the highest paid workers and the lowest
paid workers. But today the trade unions are once again playing the employers’
game of differentials. This means favouring those
sections of workers who are most attached to the employers’ exploitation. This
is the framework in which we should see the discussions about staff status and
so-called “skill recognition” [professionalità].
We have to point out that in a period of real
restructuring by capital – e.g. robotisation – any
talk of skill, of “re-skilling”, is a con. When you
are faced with these robots, with the automation of machine tools etc, you can
see this talk of “re-skilling” for what it is – an
ideological weapon aimed at dividing the workers. Obviously the effect of these
machines is to de-skill the present workforce inside the factory. The only
function of the workers is to watch the machines and push buttons to start and
stop them. Meanwhile there is a very low percentage of actual skilled workers,
who are involved in maintenance of these machines. The vast mass of the workers
are becoming more and more de-skilled. For this reason we say that to speak of
“re-skilling” today means simply reinforcing the
bosses’ ideology and strengthening the divisions inside the working class.
The position that we put forward in the mass meetings
before the Union platform was drawn up was as follows: automatic graduation to
higher grades. This was the result of a deep analysis of precisely what the
objectives of this platform. of demands meant for the workers. And it was a
position with which the rest of the workers were in total agreement. This was
the judgement of the mass meetings in the factories –
but the trade union organisation in no sense took
account of this rank and file push. In fact our group put up posters, “dazebaos”, in which we attacked this “couldn’t care
less” attitude of the union in relation to the workers’ opinions regarding the
demands. These posters stirred up a lot of discussion inside the plant, a lot
of feeling.
Women workers at FIAT-Mirafiori
Red Notes: In the past few days we have seen a revival of the
FIAT workers’ struggle. The day before Mayday we saw the strike by women
workers at the Mirafiori plant, and this was followed
within a few days by mass picketing and workers’ violence against the Company’s
layoff policies. Could you tell us your view of what was happening in those
days?
Marco: OK. The question of the struggles that are developing
inside FIAT-Mirafiori. The first thing I must say is
that these struggles are still struggles at the mass level. Now, you might
think that this is in contradiction with what I was saying earlier about the
workers’ lack of interest in the contract negotiations. Well, the workers are
participating en masse in this kind of struggle not because they are fighting
for the objectives of the Union platform, but because these contract
negotiations are historic negotiations. They are negotiations in which the
workers are giving expression to all the repressions, all the anger that has
been building up day by day, inside the workplaces, and in the society at
large.
The struggles of the women at the end of April were a
fight about the conditions of life and work for women. In a sense they were a
miniature version of the struggles at FIAT in the Hot Autumn in 1969 –
miniature in the sense that they were confined to the area of the Body Plant.
This was a fight over questions of conditions and environment, over the
structural conditions that women have to endure in the factory. The FIAT
management have recently signed on a large number of women workers, housewives,
but they were not structurally prepared for the arrival of these women into the
factory. So you find two or three women having to share a changing locker;
you’ve got the toilets without the facilities that women need; you’ve got
showers that are no good, and are also very few in relation to the number of
women being employed.
By the way, I do not agree with the union position that
the hiring of, women is a trade union victory. I see it as a victory for
capital. Precisely because it will reinforce the present levels of workers'
mobility in the plant. I am not saying that it’s easier to move women inside
the factory just because they are women. The fact is that women tend to stay in
the factory for 2 – 3 – 4 years at the most. This allows FIAT to operate a
whole policy of workers’ flexibility, flexibility of numbers employed, in
relation to the needs of the market.
The union’s contract demands contained nothing which
refers to the whole question of labour turnover.
Therefore, when workers leave voluntarily, or when they are sacked, or when
they retire, FIAT has a free hand in deciding whether to replace those workers
or not, in relation to the needs of the car market.
The strike action that was taken by the women came at a
moment of generalisation of the struggle, over the
question of FIAT’s layoffs. So now we must ask, how
did we arrive at the position of being sent home on May 2nd?
The reasons were the usual ones. FIAT was trying to
break the pattern of sectional strikes inside the plant. On this occasion it
was a struggle in the Final Assembly area, a fight that was just, and almost
sacrosanct – a fight against overtime. FIAT at this moment was continually
making provocations as part of their side of the contract negotiations. During
a period of workers’ struggle, FIAT goes and calls in workers for Saturday and
Sunday working in order to make up for production which had been lost as a
result of previous strikes. So, after Mayday, the Final Assembly workers
arrived in the plant and they saw that some of the unfinished cars that they
had left had been finished by other workers during overtime working. This was
Wednesday May 2nd – and the workers folded their arms and refused to start
work. FIAT responded by laying off the Assembly Plant.
Fighting against FIAT’s
layoffs
Now, on the question of layoffs, note that this is a
policy that FIAT has carried out ever since 1972, as a means of breaking the
sectional and departmental struggles inside the plant, which really hurt the
employer’s interests. It has been a general policy of FIAT management – but it
has always had an extremely hard-hitting reply from the workers. This has meant
a lot of anger in the plant, and large violent demonstrations inside the
factory. This has meant that sometimes FIAT tries to avoid layoffs, in the
sense that they prefer to pay workers to stay in the factory even if the actual
levels of production are extremely low. For example, on May 2nd, they started
by only sending home the Assembly Plant, because it’s a plant where the
comrades of the area of Autonomy are not so well represented.
However, on May 2nd, the Assembly workers decided to
hit back at FIAT management. They decided to go round to the Administrative
offices and drive the management and the white collar workers out of the
factory. This was the decision of the workers – but a large section of the
Works Committee was against this. At this point there was a violent reaction
from the women, who argued against the shop stewards’ unwillingness to act.
Then the Works Committee were left standing there, and the workers marched off.
They tried to break down the steel-plated gate that leads into the
Administration area. But they did not succeed. At this point they ransacked the
white collar staff canteen, taking away meals etc. Meanwhile, in the
Body-in-White there was very little work – but the workers were not laid off,
because FIAT was trying not to unite the two sections of workers in a common
struggle. FIAT wanted to isolate that struggle, prevent it from spreading.
Then, on May 3rd FIAT once again played the layoff
card. This time all sections of the plant were affected. The response of the
workers on both shifts was solid. The factory gates were blockaded, locked and
picketed. No workers were allowed in or out, and all traffic was stopped.
Workers patrolled the perimeter walls of the plant to make sure nobody got in
or out.
The intention of both the morning shift and the
afternoon shift was to hit the FIAT management. But the steel gates had stood
in the way... the comrades had not been expecting this layoff… people were not
prepared… they didn’t have the necessary equipment for dealing with the gate…
so a second attempt on the gate also failed . . . (the comrades had intended to
arm themselves with oxy-acetylene cutters in order to break down the gates).
So, the afternoon shift arrived, to find the gates
manned by foremen, supervisors, superintendents etc – that whole layer of
people whose only function is to control production and workers. At 2.45pm on
May 3rd, the workers of the afternoon shift were also laid off. At this point
the workers immediately formed up in angry groups to march round the factory.
Inside the factory there are a number of points where workers gather in moments
of struggle, reference points, where you get together to organise.
100-200 workers gather there and form up a march, and they go round the plant
with a megaphone, carrying red flags, shouting slogans etc, in order to pull
out all the workers who are still working in various parts of the plant. They
go round for half an hour or an hour, until the demonstration has reached a
suitable size. This is the usual way that a march forms up.
Now, to return to the layoff of the Body Plant and
Assembly Plant. The workers’ march formed up, in a manner which was
spontaneous, immediate and violent. Right from the start, some comrades from
the Body-in-White had been saying that the thing to do was to chase out of the
factory all the foremen etc (FIAT’s “structure of
command”) who had managed to get into the factory. Meanwhile, a number of
workers were guarding the factory gates.
The workers’ march inside the factory
As the workers were marching round the plant –
extremely angry at this umpteenth provocation by FIAT management – the factory
became a battlefield. Half-finished cars were destroyed. Materials were
scattered across the floor and trodden underfoot. Work benches were overturned
onto cars on the line. Finished cars at the end of the lines were devastated.
But this was still not enough for the workers.
They returned to the gates. They discussed with those
workers who wanted to go home. They decided to take up the policy that had
already been discussed in the Body-in-White – namely to hunt out the foremen,
and chase them out. The factory was quiet as a grave – except that all you
could hear was shouting, slogans etc of the workers in struggle. The workers
were running – and you could see the foremen trying to escape. The foremen who
were caught were put at the head of the march and forced to carry red flags.
Any foremen who put up resistance – whether active or passive – was hit and
kicked, and was then encouraged to join the head of the march, with his red
flag, and to be frog-marched out of the factory gates.
When you read the newspapers – in particular La Stampa of Turin, the newspaper which is majority owned
by FIAT – you will find statements to the effect that the violence of those two
days was due to autonomous groups of workers led by Autonomia
Operaia [Workers’ Autonomy], particularly on the
afternoon shift. On the morning shift, on the other hand, they referred not so
much to the autonomous workers, but to workers who were “acting outside the
control of the trade union organisations”. This gives
you an idea of the strength of the autonomous groups inside the plant – in the
sense that the organisational level that these groups
have in the factory was so high that it was impossible for the trade union to
control them.
Dealing with arrogant foremen
Now, while we’re still on the subject of chasing out
foremen, there was another incident about a month ago. A workers’ march from
the Body Plant and the Press Shop went over to the Engine Plant. This march was
an act of solidarity with the workers of the Engine Plant. This is a weak plant
at Mirafiori, and there had been a series of
provocations by foremen against the workers. Those foremen who had used
violence or reprisals against workers were beaten up and hospitalised.
One of these foremen who comes to mind was one of those
bastards who represses the workers, and who had sacked a woman worker. She was
sacked because she refused to bring an ashtray to the foreman. This foreman was
singled out, was badly beaten up, and ended up in hospital. Another foreman was
also beaten up – in this case the one who had been responsible for the sacking
of comrade Motisi, a recognised
vanguard in the struggles of the Engine Plant, who had been sacked because he
put up a poster about the question of terrorism, where the FIAT management and
the employers’ organisations were denounced as the
principal hiding place of the real terrorists. It stated that every day they
carry out violence and murder within the working class.
Motisi was sacked for that poster –
and the trade union organisation, even the union
lawyers, absolutely refused to take up his case. They refused to offer any
legal aid to comrade Motisi… one union lawyer, for
example, who would rather defend a father who seduces his daughter, rather than
a worker who is sacked for putting up a poster like that.
So, the foreman responsible for his sacking was also
beaten up and hospitalised. As a result of this
violence, FIAT took action against a worker from the Press Shop. They singled
him out as one of the workers who had beaten up two foremen. But this worker
received all possible help and support from the trade union organisation,
because he is a sympathizer of the Communist Party. The line of defence adopted by the trade union organisations
was that FIAT management was only picking on him because they were unwilling to
act against the people who were really responsible – and the implication was
(and was stated more or less openly in leaflets) that the “violent ones” came
from the Body Plant.
The repression against Workers’ Autonomy
[The next section of the interview goes on to discuss
the development of autonomous workers’ organisation
inside FIAT and inside the working class in general, from 1969 to the present
day.]
Red Notes: In
Marco: Well, let’s try a little history – let’s talk about
the development of organisation, and the initiatives
developed by the political vanguards which were created in 1969 and
subsequently, in the struggles inside FIAT. These vanguards were born with Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio [“Fight On” and “Workers’ Power”]. They were organisations created with the support, the help, of
intellectuals.
As far as I am concerned, these comrades made some
tremendous advances. Here I think we should go back for a moment to the first
conference of the Autonomia [“Autonomy”], held in
Bologna in 1972. Its theme was the necessity of getting organised,
in the light of the fact that the historical groups of the Italian
extra-parliamentary Left had not provided the working class movement either
with instruments or with objectives by which the organisation
of conflict inside the workplaces of this society could become a permanent and
ongoing practice, against exploitation and against the bosses.
Photo: SCIOPERO
In 1972, on the basis of an initiative by the comrades
of via dei Volsci in Rome,
and comrades from the Petrolchimica
plant in Porto Marghera, from the FIAT motor
company, and from the various collectives that existed at the national level,
there was an attempt to discuss what was, in that period, the attitude of the
working class towards the repression which was being carried out by the state
against pickets, against workers’ attempts to come outside of the factories
during strikes, which involved hundreds of police and carabinieri
on the factory gates during the high moments of the struggle inside FIAT.
The big advances that were being made by the comrades
of the Policlinico Hospital in Rome, and by the
comrades of the ENEL (nationalised electricity
board), as well as the organisational advances that
were being made outside the workplace, at the territorial level, combined with
the continuous level of refusal by the proletariat. Namely, the self-reduction
of electricity and telephone bills, the occupation of housing – all objectives
which led, in real terms, to regaining some of the buying power of your wage,
and which were (and still are) a means of cutting down the money available to
the system. This was a general attempt by the proletariat in general to reduce
the attack on its standard of living, the robbery from its wage packet.
The comrades studied the objectives that could best be
advanced in the various situations. They understood the refusal, the rejection
of the power of a single organisation or organisations – as well as the question of control, of autonomy,
in terms of controlling your own objectives and demands – a control which must
be exclusively in the hands of the working class in each situation. In general
terms this amounted to a refusal of centrality, of centralisation
of precise political lines – at least as regards the objectives involved in
specific struggle situations. It meant that control was to be exercised by the
vanguards in those particular situations. It meant a concern by those vanguards
to become reference points for the mass of workers.
This provided the basis for a big step forward – the
transition towards the construction of a new movement at a time when the
movement seemed almost dead. The new movement was born on the contradictions
that, day after day, sprang up and were becoming clearer in all the
institutional organisations. The movement which was
dying – and which the trade union organisations were
recuperating, in order to draw it into line with their own objectives – faced
being drawn into the political line of the trade unions, towards a
co-management of power with the bosses, and towards the policy of working class
self-sacrifice in recent years.
The move was now towards a reconstruction of the old
movement, towards a refusal of government austerity programmes
and sacrifices, and this was a need that was felt very much by those who you
could call the “historical cadres” of that movement. This new movement is not
an “alternative” to the trade union organisations; it
is not an attempt to build a “third” union. It is a movement that breaks off
any form of relationship with the institutions. It is a movement that advances
its objectives on the basis of what are the real needs of the working class. It
is a movement that fights, day by day, against the continuous reprisals organised by the state and the bosses to crush, day by day,
the working class. The sackings, the arrests that have taken place in the last
few years, have not succeeded in silencing or blocking the initiatives taken by
these movements that grew up out of those big contradictions that were
developing in the institutional organisations.
Photo: PRESS WITH TEETH
We now come to the recent wave of arrests. The state
has launched a violent attack, in order to strike against the “brains” – or rather,
those who, in theoretical terms, or in terms of structural and material organisation rather than theory, were making their
contribution to this movement. The state’s aim is to hit that layer of
intellectuals who supported – and who are still supporting – these initiatives.
The importance of the April 7th case
The attempt to brand these people as the brains behind
the Red Brigades is a despicable accusation. Because not only are these people not
the leaders of, or the brains behind, the Red Brigades – but at the same time
the state is claiming that it has put an end to terrorism in Italy. This is
absolutely not true. The Red Brigades have formed, have reformed; there has
been the birth of hundreds of groups which have been acting, if not along the
political line of the RB, at least along more or less the same lines in
practice. The State, in order to stop this wave of armed attacks, has now
arrested Toni Negri, Mario Dalmaviva
(who, apart from anything else, has been out of politics for three years now), Oreste Scalzone and other
comrades who, in my personal judgement, are
completely outside what the state is calling “terrorist organisation
Their only guilt is to have written, to have made analyses
of, a new mode of the struggle carried out by what they call the “social
worker”. The “social” worker [trans note: or “socialised”],
as we see it, is that section of the proletariat and sub-proletariat which is
unemployed, which (because of the restructuration of
capitalism) finds itself having to live an extremely precarious life. So the
fault of these comrades who have been arrested has been simply that they analysed the behaviour of the
“social” worker, and of groups of workers that were bom
inside the factories, and who had analysed the fact
that, at the personal level, the mass struggles were not and are not enough to
defeat the employer. So, the advance of the logic of sabotage, of organised sabotage, the logic of the destruction of the
structures of capital and of their organisational
levels; organised groups who fight against the
repression of the state, by sabotaging the repressive structure of that state,
and therefore striking at prisons, carabinieri
barracks and headquarters of political parties who have most taken up positions
against the working class.
In relation to this, and in relation to the repression
that is advancing day by day, the comrades of the Autonomia
have started to organise and discuss among the
workers. We have produced leaflets and newspapers. We have tried to make use of
those very few spaces that the bosses’ state has left open to us.
[Red Notes – Interview
recorded in
_______________________________________
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