CHAPTER 39
THE SACKING OF THE 61 – 1979
Red Notes: A lot of people are saying that FIAT’s counter-attack
started with the sacking of the 61 workers in 1979. Can you tell us a bit about
the background to those sackings?
Marco: On this matter there have been a number of interviews
and articles done by comrades, both in the Left press and in the bourgeois press, so that the news about FIAT’s repressive action can
reach further afield. The comrades have tried to stress that the violence that
the workers expressed during the 1979 Contract negotiations was a correct
violence, if you put it in relation to the violence that the employer practises
every day, a direct violence against the whole of the working class, in the
form of the repeated deaths at work that happen in the factory, the repeated accidents
etc.
For example, in the FIAT Foundries (TEKSID) there was a
serious accident involving the death of a number of workers.
FIAT management, in order to produce more iron, had filled one of the furnaces
with a larger quantity of materials than it was scheduled to hold. I received
the facts of this matter directly from a white collar worker in the Work Study
Department, where they have the figures for the maximum safe capacity for such
furnaces. Thus the deaths – the murders – of these workers were due to. the fact that FIAT (TEKSID) had loaded the furnaces with a
far larger load than they were designed to handle. And when these deaths
happened, the trade union organisations would not even call a strike – and here
I am not talking of a general strike, but at least a strike in the areas of
production associated with TEKSID – namely all the FIAT factories in Turin.
Workers’ violence and insubordination
They were prepared to allow to pass
almost unnoticed this form of official murder of workers. This is the true
violence, and not that so-called “violence” that happens during demonstrations
and during the strikes over national agreements. In this incident two workers
and one foreman died, and another two workers were very seriously burned. This
was in 1978.
Now, I remember that during the Moro kidnap (and I am
not just trying to be polemical here) the trade unions called for strike action
by workers, to protest against the actions of the Red Brigades. But the workers
rejected the strike call. The unions had called for immediate strike action,
pickets on the gates, and a stoppage of all production. The workers rejected
the call because they wanted to show that, for the unions and the employers the
life of a worker is worth nothing (and they cited the case of these workers who
had died at TEKSID). While on the other hand the death of Moro’s bodyguard, of
the policemen who defended him and who uphold the bosses’ system, is something
that the union considers to be worth mourning. This situation came to serious
blows on the factory gates, between workers and Communist Party goon squads
supporting the strike call, with the workers rejecting the call.
As I was saying earlier, workers’ violence is a daily
form of action. The employer may succeed in destroying the level of mass
organisation, by sacking those vanguard militants who, day after day, struggle
towards the building of those mass organisations. But, as I see it, the
employer will never succeed in destroying the: workers’ rejection of the whole
system of work under capitalism.
From discussions with the comrades that FIAT has not
sacked and who are still working in the factory, and from discussions with the
kind of mass worker who does not play an active political part in the factory,
we can see that the level of repression in the factory has increased, leaving
very little space for mass actions of rebellion. But there still remains a will
to fight.
Therefore the workers are waiting for a better time, in
order, as we say, to make the employers pay, to make them pay for everything
they’ve done. In fact, the comrades are waiting till September, after the Summer shutdown. They see September as a time when it will
be possible for FIAT workers to take back the things which, in the space of
only a few months, the employer has been able to take away from us. There have
been so many gains over the past years, which the employer has been able to
take away from us after the sackings of the “61”.
When I refer to the daily level of the FIAT workers’
struggle, I mean things like the following: when FIAT-Rivalta was first built,
the assembly lines were controlled by photo-cells rather than by mechanical
trip-switches. When the workers didn’t feel like working any more, they
pretended to go over and get a cup of coffee. They took the coffee cup and
stuck it over one of the photo-cells. The line would stop automatically. The
management would arrive, with foremen, maintenance workers etc, to mend the
line, and get it going again. They couldn’t work out why the line wouldn’t run.
After a while one of them noticed the coffee cup over the photo-cell. They went
mad! It was great! This was on the assembly line. Then, in the Press Shop for
example, and in Metal Finishing, you have counters that count the number of
parts going through. All you have to do is bang them on the top, and they
register a part going through. This is a daily thing – one of the thousand
things that workers do. It’s nothing special. It’s a daily thing, something that
you don’t even remember as special. It’s something that you do every day in the
same way that you go to eat your lunch every day.
Photo: CARTOON – Continuous-Flow
Production Process
Another example from the Press Shop is where workers
throw a nut or bolt into one of the presses. The press comes down and the bolt
leaves a mark or dent in the die. So the whole die has to be changed. The
presses are enormous, and it takes them hours to do the change-around. And for
the worker it takes just a moment – you’re passing, you chuck a bolt in, nobody
sees you. And the result of this is not just that you stop one press – it means
you stop a whole line, because the lines in the Press Shop are all automated
and interlinked. Stopping a press means stopping the line.
1979: FIAT Workers “Take Over the City”
Red Notes: During late 1979 there were the very important
struggles around the negotiation of the 1979 FIAT national agreement. We have
heard that FIAT workers were doing some amazing things in that period. Could
you tell us about some of what happened?
Marco: I would start by saying that the contents of the union’s
platform during those negotiations were not at all what the workers wanted. The
comrades of the Workers’ Autonomy movement, for example, were very active in
expressing their disagreement with the Union platform in that period. And in
the mass meetings it was their contributions which always drew the loudest
applause and got the biggest support. They were giving voice to the reality of
the workers’ position in FIAT, both in terms of wage levels, and in terms of
the attacks, the daily attacks, by FIAT management.
As the workers saw it, the union platform was not
sufficient to pay what had to be paid, in terms of meeting inflation. They felt
it was a bit absurd to go ahead with a long programme of hours and hours of
strike action in order to win something that wasn’t worth fighting for.
For this reason, both inside and outside the factory,
we began to see clashes taking place, fairly violent clashes. This meant, for
example, that heavy metal security gates were on occasion ripped out; windows
were broken; factory fences broken down. There were instances in which roads
were blocked outside the factory, during these negotiations, as well as roads
being blocked in the centre of
For example there was one instance in which a
demonstration of workers marched into the centre of
The most remarkable action by the workers in this
period was the action in Via Berthollet, where FIAT have
their offices. This was just one of the many, many actions carried out by FIAT
workers in this period. They broke windows; they marched into offices with
spray cans to spray slogans; they spat at scab white collar workers; the white
collar workers were forced to run a gauntlet down a corridor of workers; they
were spat at and sprayed with paint; the offices in Via Berthollet were
wrecked! Similar actions took place (though a bit less dramatic) in other FIAT
offices in Piazza San Carlo, in the centre of town.
I remember, when all the
workers arrived at Via Berthollet, the security guards were all shoved inside
and some windows were broken. The workers went upstairs, and there was a
manager there saying: “But you can’t do this, there’s the Russian Embassy just
down the road… what will they think?” Needless to say, the workers weren’t
worried if there was a Russian Embassy, a Chinese Embassy, or an American
Embassy. First of all they had a general clear-out of the place. Anything they
found, they pocketed. Then they chased the white collar workers out, and put
them at the head of their demonstration. The police stood by. They did
absolutely nothing to intervene. The situation was so hot that, if the police
had intervened, then all hell would have broken loose.
I remember that, during one of the workers’ road
blocks, there was an intervention by a police patrol. There was a tailback of
miles and miles of cars and lorries held up by the
workers’ roadblock. A police car arrives on the scene. They wanted to take down
the roadblock. The workers put themselves in front of the roadblock and refused
to budge. One policeman went to put his hand to his pistol. What happened? His
car was completely hammered by the workers, kicking it, hitting it with
hammers. He just managed to get back into it, turn round and drive off again.
Road blocks and militant picketing
As I say, there were some moments of extreme high
tension.
During this period of the road blocks some workers from
one small factory came to ask our help, to help them picket their own factory,
because the employer there was a bastard and was organising scab labour to beat
up the pickets. So we went along with them, and when the scabs saw their
workers arriving with workers from FIAT, they turned white and didn’t give any
more trouble. The employer was out of his mind. He began pushing and shouting...
in fact there were three of them, three brothers… and for their pains the
workers punched them, kicked them in the bollocks, spat in their faces, and let
them know what they thought of them. There was one comrade who would go up to
one of these managers and say: “You ugly, poxy bastard, go and lose yourself
somewhere,” and he’d spit in his face. And the man stayed quiet.
A way of settling old scores
I tell you, in that period
there so many amazing things happening that I can hardly even begin to describe
them. I’m not a film director!
They’re the sort of moments that you will remember all
your life. For example, there were the workers from Metal Finishing, especially
the younger workers; when they went on a march to the Admin offices, they never
went empty-handed. They all had good, thick belts, into which they stuck a
good, big hammer. As they went down the assembly lines they’d use the car
bodies on the lines as drums! In this period there were hundreds and hundreds
of car bodies that had to be taken away for repair work because they were all
dented. Then, when we got to the offices, it would usually be the older
workers, the ones who knew the score and had been at FIAT for some years, who
would start the action. Then the younger ones would see that we were going in
there to give management a brutal time, and they’d come along and join in.
You’d see them taking a general foreman by the collar and chasing him out with
kicks up the backside, if he refused to move.
Then, on one occasion, FIAT laid off a particular
section, and the workers decided to chase the foremen out of the plant. The way
they saw it was that they weren’t being paid, because they were laid off, so
nobody should be paid. So the workers went round the changing rooms and the
toilets, and chased the foremen out of the plant.
There was another very nice incident of this sort.
There was one foreman who was working in the plant one time. He was the one who
had led to the sackings of the first five workers sacked for disciplinary
reasons at FIAT in this period. He was “transported” out of the factory, with
kicks up the backside and punches in his face. The man was much hated. And two
days later they found his house completely gutted by fire. There’s nothing left
of it now. His whole house was gutted. They went and left something behind his
door… and the result was a fair-size bonfire!
Another thing the workers did was to hijack buses. By
this stage in the negotiations, the city of
The art of helping yourself
There were so many things that happened in this period
that I can hardly call them all to mind. Also because they were so spontaneous,
so natural, that they hardly seemed worth noting at the time. For example, when
we set off on marches, the workers would go into the ritzy bars all along the
route, the “de luxe” bars, the sort of place where you
only go if you’ve got a lot of money. You’d have 15-20 workers going in there
and completely cleaning the place out. They’d strip the place, and you’d see
everyone coming out with huge cream cakes, trifles, ice-creams etc, without
paying a penny. In one place they went in for something to drink, and the boss
refused to let them drink unless they paid the cashier in advance. Well, they
were so upset that they just helped themselves, saying: “They won’t serve us here,
so we’ll have to serve ourselves.” And you saw the whole march going along,
stuffing themselves with cake.
The same thing happened at the plush Motta bar in
Piazza Castello. The barman refused to serve them unless they paid first. So
they just helped themselves and walked out with the stuff. And the police
didn’t even try to intervene. You could say that this was a sort of general
plundering of these sorts of places, the sorts of places where workers, in
normal times, wouldn’t even be able to show their faces, because they’re so
expensive.
Now, over the years I’ve seen so much of this sort of
thing in
But the most remarkable things that were happening in
this period were happening inside the plant, in the daily struggles on the shop
floor, which had nothing to do with the official course of union negotiations.
For example, in that period, the Paint Shop workers, in addition to the hours
of strike action called by the union for the Contract, were striking regularly
over their own issues in the Paint Shop – in particular, conditions. They were
calling for a reduction of the time they have to spend inside the paint booth.
Instead of working half an hour inside and a quarter of an hour outside, they
were demanding a quarter of an hour in the booth, and a quarter of an hour’s
rest. They were carrying this struggle forward, and it was this kind of
struggle that FIAT was then using in order to lay off other departments.
FIAT tries to break organisation
FIAT’s idea was to set up a conflict
; between the Paint Shop workers and the workers who were being laid
off; FIAT was using the layoffs as a weapon of division. But the division did
not succeed. I remember one occasion when the workers were laid off. They
formed up a march to go to the Admin offices, and they forced FIAT to pay the
lay-off period. They confronted the management, and said, more or less: “Look,
if you’re not going to pay us, then you’re going straight through that window…”
The result was that all the Body Plant workers who had
been laid off got paid for the day, a complete day’s wages.
The struggles of the Paint Shop workers continued, at
that sort of pace. Then FIAT decided to sack five workers, in order to break
that continuity of struggles in the Paint Shop. This was in May/June 1979. But
the Paint Shop was not broken, because they had a strong organisation. They
were able to carry forward struggles over gradings, over a reduction of working
time on the line, over their conditions of work, and other such issues which
gained a lot more support than the official Union strikes for the National
Agreement. Anyway, FIAT opted for a trial of strength with these 5 sackings. In
a sense the sackings were a setback. But then, after the summer shutdown, the
struggles started up again… although a little weakened.
After September...
Now, to come up to date, after
the sacking of the “61”. In the factory today the situation is stagnant. Among
the mass of workers there is a certain fear, a fear for the future. Umberto
Agnelli has stated that he is looking for mass redundancies at FIAT. However,
as I say, the comrades inside the plant are looking to September as the period
when they expect the struggle to pick up again, with more workers getting involved.
The September struggle will deal with the issue of the 1980 national contract,
and with the planned sackings – which are expected to be around 15,000, out of
a national FIAT manual workforce of 180,000.
[Red Notes – Interview recorded
in
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Photo: CARTOON
CARTOON: GASPARAZZO AND THE RED BRIGADES:
Our autonomist hero is caught up in the state’s
witch-hunt for the Red Brigades. Everyone is suspect. “Now I think of it, he
says, that card that I sent the wife from prison was a bit dodgy.....not to
mention when I bought a book in that Left bookshop... Damn!! And I’ve still got
all those empty mineral water bottles lying around. They’ll say they’re for
Molotovs! It’s curtains for me!” And as he falls asleep he can see the
headlines: "Gasparazzo Implicated in the Red Brigades!”...“State
Prosecutor declares: ‘We have prepared arrest warrants for 15,634
Gasparazzists’.” Gasp!!
_______________________________________
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