CHAPTER 38
INTERVIEW WITH A FIAT FOREMAN
PREFACE:
This
interview was recorded and published by G. Pansa, deputy editor of the
newspaper La Repubblica. It was published in the book Storie italiane
di violenza e terrorismo, Laterza, 1980.
__________________
I don’t want to pass an opinion on the 61 workers that
have been sacked by FIAT. You’ll understand why in a minute. As regards all the
rest, though, I’m prepared to talk, because I think it would be useful to let
people know what’s going on here. In return, though, I ask one thing: please
don’t publish my name and personal details, and don’t describe me. I would just
say that I am 40 years old, and that I am one of the 2,000 foremen at
FIAT-Mirafiori.
For those who are not familiar with factories, let me
describe the pyramid of the factory hierarchy. First there’s the worker, then
the charge-hand, then the foreman, followed by the department foremen and the general
foreman, up through the plant manager to senior management. I’m a Grade 1
foreman, the lowest level. I earn £75 a week, and I’ve been at FIAT for 20
years. Everything I know I have learnt at FIAT, and FIAT was my first family.
But for me, today, it isn’t any more.
Nowadays I work between 9 and 11 hours a day in the
factory. And every day I ask myself “What am I doing here?” You’ve heard of
production planning, quality control etc. Well, that is my job in the section
where I work. When I arrive at the start of my shift, I count the workers who
are working with me. I know that in order to make a certain amount of
production I need a certain number of workers; I also know that, to be
saleable, the product must be trustworthy, its quality
must be alright.
In short, I look after the interests of the company
that pays me. I’m not laying big claims. It’s simply a necessity – in other
times it would have been called a duty. Companies can only thrive if work is
done properly, and the whole caboodle, the economy, only holds up if companies
are thriving. This is what I have learned in twenty or so years of work. And
that’s what I used to do, for a long time. But now I don’t do it any more.
“Capo, what nice legs you've got…"
Is it the fault of the workers? I would put it like
this. Take a hundred workers from FIAT-Mirafiori. Thirty just don’t want to
know, don’t want to know the union, or anything. For them the factory is just a
place where they have to go to work, they work hard, and that’s that. Another
thirty want to see a fair and democratic trade union policy being followed.
Then another twenty or thirty swing with the first wind that comes along…they
don’t know where they stand. And those twenty are the targets for the remaining
fifteen to pressure – those fifteen who are extremists, and who use every
occasion to kick up a ruckus, to avoid work, and to prevent others from
working.
Fifteen is not many, but it’s enough to create havoc if
nobody reacts. They’re a minority, but they can do what they like. Their enemy
is the first level of management that comes to hand – namely the foreman. They
keep the foreman in their sights, as if he was Agnelli himself, in person. You
struggle to keep production going, you try to keep the
required levels as regards quantity and quality of the product. But they – particularly
the young ones, the new starters of the last couple of years – one by one pile
on the straws that are going to break your back.
“Capo, don’t piss me off, or we’ll strike”; “Capo, fuck
off”; “Capo, you’re a bastard. Watch out, because I know you, I know where you
live, and I’ll get you once we’re out of here”; “Capo, you’re a fascist”; “Oh
Capo, what nice legs you’ve got! You wouldn’t want to lose them…!”; “Capo,
don’t report me, or else…” We just have
to take it. We just have to swallow.
Sometimes they go “Hunt the Foreman”. I’ve always
managed to keep out of harm’s way – they’ve never thrown me out of the plant.
Because, when they come marching round the factory, I’ve always got out of the
way. But I’ve seen some pretty ugly moments. I’ve seen my friends pushed around
all over the place, with red flags put into their hands, and I’ve had to stay
hidden, dead still, so as not to end up in the same position as them.
Then there are things that happen to you outside the
factory, at home. The threatening phone calls: “Try not to step out of line… stay
on the side of the workers…” Or the threats to my wife: “Watch out, one of
these days we’ll do away with that pig husband of yours.” I’ve always been OK,
personally. They haven’t even set fire to my car – probably because I always
take a different route to work and always park in a different place. But
slashed tyres and burnt-out cars are quite a regular occurrence. Not to mention
all the other things. Seeing your colleagues wounded – “lamed”, as you
journalists put it, as if they were cattle, instead of men who are condemned to
live with that for the rest of their lives. And the plant
managers, killed by the armed bands, with the latest one being Ghiglieno, Planning
Director for the FIAT cars group.
So, as the months have gone by, my life has changed.
Once I used to come home in the evenings and rest, or play with the children,
or do the odd bit of work. Now I can only think of recharging my personal batteries
so as to face the next day’s battles at FIAT. I’ve changed inside myself too.
Put yourself in my shoes. You’re at work, and you do one thing, and they say: “Bastard,
you’re wrong.” So you do the other, and they still say: “Bastard, you’re wrong.”
So how can you avoid beginning to think that there’s really something wrong
with you, that you’re not the person you used to be?
“We foremen... we have already given in”
It’s in the factory, particularly, that you start
noticing the changes in you. I saw it when they killed Ghiglieno. They waited
for him in front of his house in via Petrarch, at about 8 in the morning, as he
was on his way to work at FIAT, and they killed him more or less right in front
of his wife. This was 21 September 1979. That day all the foremen and
supervisors met, and we asked ourselves: “What are we going to do? How long
will this go on? Are we still going to go on struggling to keep this company on
its feet?” We told ourselves yes, but it was obvious that everybody really felt
like giving in.
In fact, to tell the truth, with us foremen it’s no
longer a matter of wanting to give in. We have already given in. All that’s
missing is for us to start going sick – but in effect, we might as well. I know
that if a customer has brakes which don’t work, or a scratched piston, it’s our
fault as well. But it’s become hard to behave by the rule book.
You don’t believe me? Come into the factory. If I see a
worker kicking a component about, I’m only able to do one thing: I wait for a
while, and then go and pick it up. And what if I see someone stealing parts? I
turn the other way and pretend I don’t see. Report him? I wouldn’t even think
of it. All we can do is swallow. This factory is
turning into a piece of shit.
Do you think that’s putting it too strongly? Well, I
don’t think I could find words sufficiently bad to describe the FIAT factory
today. Did you know that we often find used condoms inside the car bodies? To
say that the place is in a state of chaos is not to do it justice. And the
newspapers have never told the truth.
So how can we stand up to it? I would like to use a
difficult word: sometimes I feel myself de-personalised, completely. Even when
I’m outside FIAT I feel like that. When someone asks me who I am, and where I
work, I don’t know how to answer. Am I a foreman? No, not any more. I’m not
anything any more. I’m just someone who does his job badly, or, rather, someone
who doesn’t know what his job is . . .
The decisions that I can take are virtually nil. I
can’t punish anyone, because if I do, I run the risk of getting shot. I can’t
even reward good workers. Sometimes a worker will say to me: ‘OK, so you can’t
do anything about the layabouts who won’t work, but you could at least give a
bonus to people like me who will work.’ But I can’t even do that. In the
factory now we’re all the same, all equal, all at the same level.
Lama goes on the television to talk about rewarding
skill levels. Don’t talk balls! I’d like to have Lama here in
“I don't want to end up in the casualty ward"
I’m not in the union any more. And the only reason I
don’t criticise it openly is because of fear. OK, let them call me a coward,
but the only reason I don’t speak out against the way the union is going is
because I’m scared shitless. I’ve got extremists in my section, and I don’t
want to end up in the Casualty Ward. But at the same time, I’m not a
right-winger. Far from it. I try to think for myself.
Every day I read two newspapers – La Stampa [t.n.
the paper owned by FIAT] and L’Unità [t.n. the
Communist Party newspaper] – so as to keep up with the news and get a balanced
view. I know that we can’t go back to the iron fist of the old days, because
that was an unfair system, and anyway it would be impossible nowadays. And the
word “intimidate” frightens me. For too many years the FIAT worker was
intimidated. But nowadays those – and there are some – who. want
to work don’t get a chance to breathe.
Photo: FOREMEN
Sometimes it makes you despair. And I ask myself: “Why
doesn’t someone do something?” But then, when I look outside FIAT, the answer
comes easily: “But who has got the moral authority to be able to do something?”
My grandad used to say that a fish always starts rotting from the head
downwards. And it’s precisely the head of our country that’s rotten – the
leaders. Our political system is frightful. I could make comparisons with the
factory. If I want to deal with a worker who arrives late to work, after
6.00am, then I have to be there, in the factory, before 6.00am. But if I don’t
get up until 7.00am, then I don’t have any right to go telling people off for
coming in late. It’s the same in
At this point I should finish by saying something about
myself again. The first thing is that
I’m going to ask to be transferred to one of the
offices. Other colleagues of mine have done it, and I’m going to do it too. I
don’t want to have responsibilities any more. I don’t want to be a foreman any
more. I just want to obey orders, and that’s all. That way, I’ll be able to
live my life without risk of getting shot at, or nervous exhaustion. I’ve
refused a promotion already. And I would be more than happy to give up some of
my pay so as to be able to live a safer life, both inside and outside the
factory. I’d do it straight away, as from tomorrow morning!
My wife’s trying to get me to
leave; FIAT as well. “Leave the job. I’m working, and anyway I’m sure you’ll find another
job.” I tell you, I’m on the point of doing it, and there’s no saying that I
wouldn’t do it soon. Where’s the joy of staying? FIAT is a sick animal, that could die at any moment. And here we are, managers and foremen, all equally impotent, standing
around to watch it die. Inside FIAT nobody’s in charge any more, and outside,
the guns are shooting. That about sums up the situation.
I have to admit it. When I first started at FIAT twenty
years ago, I imagined everything would be different. Today I think I still have
a sense of balance, But I feel like a man who has been struck down by a
continual humiliation. Yes, humiliation, that’s exactly the word. Humiliated,
and it’s as if I was caught in a trap, the trap of Mirafiori, like a prisoner
in a cage. I’m a coward, you’ll say. Maybe I am. But my only desire at the
present moment is to escape from this humiliation, and escape from the trap.
Escape from it, so that I can say to myself: “Now I can breathe a bit.”
[Translated
from Storie
italiane di violenza e terrorismo, Laterza, 1980]
_______________________________________
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