CHAPTER 48
THE SITUATION IN THE FACTORIES
- 1980
by Ed Emery
When journalists and employers
talk about the “crisis of the motor industry”, they often blame the “idle
workers”. The trade unions, on the other hand, run to say that the workers are
not idle, that they are keen to produce, and that the fault lies with corrupt
and inefficient management.
In the big industrial
concentrations of Northern Italy, industrial discipline has broken down in many
large factories – showing itself in open contempt for management, growing
levels of absenteeism, sabotage and various forms of violence against
management representatives. This is particularly true in factories like the
FIAT-Mirafiori and FIAT-Rivalta
car plants.
In other words, the system of
the large assembly line factory (the system that represented the most advanced
point of capitalism’s brutality against the working class) has broken down. The
image of the “honest, hardworking worker, accepting the power of the masters”
has given way to a new image. The old composition of the working class has
changed. The working class in the factory is now exercising its power against
the employers and the capitalist system. And the newspapers, radio and TV go to
town, claiming that the “honest worker” has been transformed into longhaired hippies
making love in empty car-bodies and displaying complete contempt for work, for
the trade unions, and for the Party.
From what we write below it is
clear that there is a new behaviour of the working
class at FIAT. The old system of exploitation is being challenged. The employer
tries to find new ways to impose his domination. The choice now is between a
further advance towards workers’ power in the factories (and in society), or a
return to “factory barbarism”, with the employers in control.
This is a situation which must
interest workers everywhere. How and why we can deprive the
employers of their “right to manage” – a right which they never had, and which
they can only exercise over us when the power balance is in their favour.
In what follows, in case
anyone thinks we are over-stating the case, we have tried to draw on many
sources in order to cross-check – newspapers, employers’ reports and accounts
by fellow workers (We are grateful to H.P. for making available the information
and translations contained here.)
A DESCRIPTION OF THE
FIAT-MIRAFIORI FACTORY
The newspaper La Repubblica (21 February 1980) published the following
description of the Mirafiori plant: “Mirafiori is the biggest city-factory in the world. It
occupies a huge rectangle just outside the centre of
“The plant has a surface area
of three million square metres, half of which is
covered by factory buildings. The surrounding wall is 4% miles long,
broken by 32 gates. In the early '70s you could read the slogans of the
workers' battles, written in letters often a yard and a half high, down the
factory walls: “The only music the bosses can hear is the sound of shutdown
machinery"; “We want the sun in
“Inside Mirafiori
there are over 30 miles of railway tracks, and almost 120 miles of conveyor
lines. (One of these conveyors still has 60 radiators belonging to the old FIAT
600 model, forgotten for more than ten years, going round the factory. Nobody
knows how to get them down without stopping the whole factory.)
“There are 13,000 pieces of
machinery, ranging from the simplest to the most complicated, and 666
stamping-presses (the biggest are the size of a small family house and they make
a hell of a din).
“The energy consumed at Mirafiori is equivalent to burning 290,000 tonnes of oil per year.
_______________
[INSERT
PICTURE – WORKERS AND FLAG]
_______________
“From this city of iron,
cement and machinery, up to 3,000 vehicles a day can be produced between six in
the morning and ten at night. Nearly three cars a minute, one
every 25 seconds. This, at least, is what FIAT publications claim.
Today, though, only 1,500-1,700 emerge every day, one every 35 seconds.
“In the past, this
city-factory is reputed to have held as many as 65,000 workers. We cannot be
sure how many work there today. The Communist Party talks of 57,000, but
according to FIAT there are nearer 59,000. The Company explains that in the
auto sector (power-train, body and assembly) there are 44,000 workers today, of
whom 7,000 (16% of the total) are women. There are 10,500 white collar workers,
of whom 2,500 are women. In the Foundry there are 900 white collar workers (250
women) and 3,500 manual workers (40 women). That makes a total of 58.930: a
fair-size provincial town. 70% of the workers are between 25 and 45 years of
age (the percentage is more or less equal for men and women). 20% of male
workers and only 9% of female workers fall into the 20-25 age group.
Approximately one in two workers at Mirafiori is
between 20 and 35 years old. Workers above the age of 45 are less than 9% of
the total.
“It is inside Mirafiori, this vast ‘city-factory’, that the famous
breakdown of discipline has shown itself most strongly.”
RELATIONS WITH FOREMEN
The “small” foremen, chargehands and team leaders have apparently taken the main
brunt of the punishment. They are in the front line. They work directly with workers,
but they are representatives of management. FIAT foremen are scared. They no
longer know where they fit in, or what the future holds for them. Foremen have
been particular targets, not only for the insults and anger of the workers, but
also for the terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades and Prima Linea (‘Front Line’). Between 1973 and early 1980,
terrorists have hit 20 times at Mirafiori. 14 foremen
have been wounded. The result is, naturally enough, terror in their ranks.
The following quotes come from
an interview with a FIAT foreman, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of
reprisals:
“We just have to take it. . . I've always been alright, 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.
“We foremen have given up. 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… 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 just someone who does his job badly, or rather, who doesn't know what his job is."
The words of this
foreman-who-is-no-longer-a-foreman are echoed by others:
“Look, strictly speaking it's against the rules to have more than 3 people working on one body. It's been shown that the work done is sub-standard, that confusion results, and then the whole body has to be returned to repair. But the foremen are not here to get discipline respected. You don't necessarily see the violence, but it's here, everywhere. It's present in the fact that we've given up command. We come to some sort of agreement, and get on as best we can. "
The young workers themselves
explain the thing in different terms: Mario, 22 years old, Mirafiori
Body Plant, talking about relations with foremen:
“On the lines there are people who can quote Foucault (a psychologist) and the creeps explode with rage because they haven't even heard of him. Then there are the gays. They blow them kisses and write ‘Long Live Renato Zero' (a pop singer) on the walls. Others roll a joint and laugh like they're crazy-high. The feminists, too, giggle every time a men tries to give them orders. The FIAT foremen have never seen the workers laughing, and they get really angry."
THE SACKING OF “THE FIAT 61”:
OCTOBER 1979
On 9 October 1979, 61 FIAT
workers in Turin received disciplinary letters from the Company. They were to
be sacked, for reasons of behaviour not consistent
with the well-being of the Company. Specific charges were not drawn up, as yet.
The implication, as reported in the newspapers, was that they were being sacked
for armed action and terrorism in the factories. The fact, though, was that
they were chosen as scapegoats – the behaviour of
which they were accused was commonplace among very many workers in the 10 years
since the Hot Autumn of 1969. FIAT achieved a number of things by sacking these
workers: it creamed off a good part of the political leadership in the
factories to the left of the Communist Party; it created the fear of sacking
among other militants; it divided the unions on the question of whether and how
these workers should be defended; and it opened the way to the mass sackings of
September 1980.
However, the charge sheet
drawn up by the Company against these workers gives some idea of the extent of
breakdown of discipline in the car factories. To a certain extent the charges
are Company propaganda – but they relate to things that have clearly been
happening in the factories, as testified in interviews with FIAT workers.
[a]
The ‘Cortei’, or Internal
A total of 29 episodes of
alleged violence occurred during the course of cortei
and demonstrations. Three of the workers, nicknamed the Red Kerchief Band
(because of their habit of covering their faces during demonstrations) are
accused of having been “armed with iron bars” and of committing “acts of
violence on foremen and office workers” during cortei
on the days of 6 and 11 July 1979. 25 of the sacked workers are accused of
intimidating workers not taking part in the marches. Another worker is accused
of forcing foremen and office workers to carry banners and placards and march at the head of the cortei.
_______________
[INSERT
PICTURE – THE FIAT FACTORY]
_______________
[b] Verbal and Non-Verbal
Intimidation
35 charges of intimidation,
mostly involving insults to foremen, who were the subject of such remarks as:
jackal, clown, parasite, worm, slave, idiot and turd.
Some more sinister remarks were also reported: “We’ll shorten your legs for
you”; “I’ve never known so many people so happy to die young”; “Our organisation knows your car number plate and address”.
[c] Sabotage
Sabotage exists at FIAT, like
in any other car plant. It ranges from a simple lack of interest in work (the
papers call this “collective sabotage”: “This practice is based on a sort of
negative cooperation which, by adding absent-mindedness to absent-mindedness
during the production and quality control of a component, progressively reduces
it to waste”) to acts requiring a greater degree of dedication and imagination.
(“At Rivalta, in the Paint Shop, a new form of
sabotage with highly artistic value has been invented, the result being a
series of multi-coloured FIAT 128s, which would
probably have pleased and excited Andy Warhol, but did less for Agnelli, despite his well-known passion for modem art”).
Specific sabotage charges
regarding machinery were not brought against the 61, but the practice is
widespread. It takes traditional as well as novel forms: the incorporation of
minor but irritating defects into the finished vehicle; “inexplicable” machinery
breakdowns; pure vandalism, in the shape of rows of shiny new cars with broken
windscreen wipers etc.
[d] Self-Reduction of Work
There are 49 charges under
this heading, most of which involve arriving at work late, leaving work early,
and general negligence. One worker was accused of having “frequently abandoned
his place of work, and working insufficiently, with very poor quality”. Several
others are charged with having left their work stations to go to the General
Foreman’s office, where they “would suddenly open the door and start beating
noisily with iron bars and hammers on empty bins brought along for that
purpose, or on pieces of metal found in the area”. Another worker was charged
that, when reprimanded for doing sub-standard work, he replied: “Just the fact
of getting up in the morning and coming into work more than justifies the wages
I get.”
The news magazine L’Espresso sent a journalist into the plant, who
commented on the atmosphere of “non-work”: “Non-work... something peculiar but
real. At any one moment the people intent on work, screwing in bolts and
assembling mudguards are few. Many others are walking up and down the line with
the slightly distracted air of one marking time. Every 10-12 yards there are
benches, like park benches, where an old worker sits reading the Sport
Gazette, a youth younger than 20 leafs through strip cartoons, and two
girls chat in low voices”. Of course, the appearance of slow-moving production
can be deceptive – but it appears that at FIAT the lower work pressures are
real.
[e] ‘Creative’ Sabotage
This charge involves the
carrying out of alternative activities in the factory. For example, one worker
was accused of setting up an “alternative canteen” in the ;
plant. He took over an area near where he worked, and regularly used it “to
cook food destined for an alternative restaurant”. Another worker has been
accused of “abandoning his work station, sometimes for long periods of time,
during which he sold table cloths and sheets”. In the words of one Communist
Party maintenance worker: “FIAT-Mirafiori is like a
giant flea market. Here you can buy anything short of a railway train – and
that’s only because they couldn’t get it into the factory! Contraband
tobacco, tights, biros, ties, food. I know someone who comes in in the morning with 30 rolls, and during the break he goes
round selling them. Then there’s the fellow in the Press Shop, who was cooking
food: the alternative canteen he called it, with meals at 2,000 lire (£1) a
head!”
[f] The Organisation
of Non-Union Struggles
Twenty-one of the 61 were also
charged with leading unofficial action in the plant. Three were charged with
having organised, between them, “more than 120
stoppages, causing loss of production and suspension of work activities on the
line”.
It is this sort of unofficial
action which often develops into “internal marches” (cortei):
“There are two sorts of demonstrations dear to the hearts of the young workers:
the silent procession of 50-100 people which suddenly, unanimously stops work
in one section and walks through into another, breaking glass and cases as they
go; or the big, violent, carnival procession, in which they advance, beating
spanners against car panels and herding the foremen ahead with kicks up the
backside. In both cases the demonstrations are against and outside the control
of the Union.” (L’Espresso, October 1979)
[g] Love
in the Factory
One of the things that has scandalised the Press is that workers actually make love in
the factory. Apparently it’s quite common to find used condoms littering empty car
bodies. “Some years ago, a personnel chief was shocked to hear that a man and a
woman had been discovered making love on the back seat of a FIAT 130 in the
plant (“A 130! Our flagship! A 3-litre engine!”) Now
this sort of thing is not in the least surprising. One tries not to see it, but
the evidence is there: closed doors, couples disappearing for minutes on end,
used condoms littering the floor” (La Repubblica).
“Yes, of course there are those who screw. There are a lot of women in the
factory now, and when straw is left near a fire…”
[h] The Organisation
of Violence
The most serious charges – against
23 of the 61 sacked – are of participating in violent groups. Six have been
charged with propagandising armed nuclei inside the
factory. FIAT apparently believes that these forms of action can be laid at the
doors of a few members of a few political groups – despite the obvious evidence
that these forms of struggle have been used repeatedly by workers since the hot
days of 1969-70. In the words of one personnel officer: “Yes, we’ve got the Red
Brigades in here, and Workers’ Autonomy too. But it’s
difficult to isolate them, to find out who they are. We only find out about
sabotage, for example, later, as it filters back from the retailers. We can’t
find out who they are, so we can’t do anything about it.”
CONTROLLING WORK LOADS
In general, production rhythms
at Mirafiori are fairly relaxed. In the words of a
FIAT official: “They have about 40 minutes per day break-time, on average,
which they can take when they want… There is a certain number of substitute
workers (we call them ‘jokers’, because they can substitute anywhere in the
pack) who take over. So, you see, there is an informal control over the break-times
they take. And, as you see, the work timings are not very fast. Workers can
choose whether to take a rest, perhaps smoke a cigarette between jobs, or
whether to accumulate time and take a longer break later on.”
_______________
[INSERT
PICTURE – SPANNERS FLOWER]
_______________
A Mirafiori
shop steward told us:
“That’s a sign of our strength. We’re proud of it”. Before, the immigrants from the South, who were new to the factory, would get very nervous when the time and motion men came round with their stop-watches. Now, of course, the attitude is completely different. They have to be grateful if they see any work at all. In some the cases the time and motion men have to negotiate with the shop stewards first, to catch them working.”
Since the 1971 FIAT national
agreement, the shop stewards (delegati) have
the right to negotiate any changes in production practice – the number of direct
workers and relief-workers, the number of pieces to be produced etc. In
addition to this increased control over timings, there have also been big gains
in official break-time. All workers now have the right to 40 minutes over and
above the half-hour meal break. Most enjoy other break periods as well,
negotiated on the basis of their particular working conditions; most Foundry workers,
for example, where work is among the most physically demanding and damaging to health,
have the right to 3 x 30 minutes rest time, in addition to the meal break.
There has been a drastic reduction in the actual time worked, per worker.
But, contrary to what the
newspapers would have us believe, this “non-work” is not just the result of
individual “anarchism” in the factory. It is also the result of years of
successful struggle aimed at improving conditions and reducing hours in the
factory.
Struggle Politics
In any war the generals need
to know the strength and make-up of the forces they are fighting against. They
also need to know the strength and composition of their own forces. This is
equally true in the class war. The trade unions and the Left movement in
In the past 2 years FIAT has
taken on 10,000 new workers, after a period in which new starters were blocked.
These have been a particular kind of worker, and have resulted in changes
probably at least as important as the changes provoked by the influx of young,
Southern Italian immigrants in the 1960s (the years of expansion, when 20,000
new workers were taken on).
From 1974 onwards there had
been very little recruitment; turnover was nothing like replaced (natural
wastage); and employment at FIAT had been dropping steadily – at a rate of
12,000 a year, according to some estimates.
In the meantime, the laws
governing the procedures for taking on new workers had changed. Previously new
workers were often taken on through a system of “recommendation” – often
through the local priest. But FIAT was now forced to accept workers sent down
by the ufficio di
collocamento – the equivalent of the British Job
Centre. The result was that the new workers were a fairly accurate
cross-section of the unemployed in
So, this mass influx was not a
repeat of the Treno del Sole (”Train
from the Sun”) of the 1960s, when thousands of young male southern immigrants
arrived at Turin’s Porta Nuova
station, with cardboard suitcases containing the last fragmentary mementos of
agricultural life in the South. The new workers, although they are often of
Southern descent, have lived their lives in the suburbs of the big city. The
men are mainly young (65% of them are under the age of 25) and the women tend
to be older (a reflection of the real structure of unemployment, as many women
look for jobs as their children reach school age).
CHANGES IN THE FACTORY
The newspapers draw a picture
of the giant factory in the grip of violent and unpredictable youth, and trace FIAT’s present ungovernability to
the recent labour intake. But the forms of struggle
for which they are blamed – the “micro-çonflictuality”
of non-union-led struggles, the violent internal marches, the blockading of
goods and many others – are a heritage of struggle that has been developing
since 1968-9, long before the intake of the 10,000 new workers (even though
they are used and developed, often with great enthusiasm, by the new workers).
Many of the new intake of workers had experienced the upsurge of the youth
movement of 1977-8; many had been students in high schools and colleges; some
had experienced the revolutionary Left organisations;
some had contact or involvement with the women’s movement and feminist ideas.
The boredom of the assembly line was not an attractive proposition.
Unquestioning obedience to lower-range management was not how they saw the
world. These workers hoped to move on to greater things sooner rather than
later – for many of them the FIAT factory was not a long-term proposition. Their sense of being more educated and intelligent than lower-level
management made plant discipline harder to enforce. The factory and work
were not their only world – music, clubs and life outside the factory were just
as important. All this leads to an attempt to escape from the factory, to
escape from its discipline. This is reflected in the levels of absenteeism at
FIAT.
ABSENTEEISM FROM WORK... AND
ABSENTEEISM FROM THE STRUGGLE
Absenteeism from work is high
at Mirafiori – although not as high as the record
levels reached at the Alfa Romeo plant in Naples. This is a worry for the
employers.
But the trade unions and
militants face another worry – the absenteeism from the struggle. At Mirafiori, the older generation (those who have lived the
ten years of struggle since the “Hot Autumn” of 1969) accuse the younger
workers of individualism:
“We hoped that the new workers would bring with them a fresh wave of struggle, but it's still the old ones, from 10 years back, who have to try and convince the young ones to stick with us. It's always us, with 10, 30 years of factory work behind us, who are here during the struggles."
“…The young people have other interests. They're not interested in the factory, you see. They even climb over the walls, you see (trans. note: during strikes). And it's us older ones who have to stand firm. They don't seem to understand that we're playing for everything here in the factory, for our working rights. They know that we're struggling for them as well."
The point is that when the unions
call strikes for issues of “national importance”, the younger workers often do
not participate. This does not mean that the younger workers are not
politically involved. There is a big disillusionment with the
_______________
[INSERT
PICTURE – KICKING]
_______________
But the younger workers have
also been absent from local, in-plant issues. On one occasion thousands of Mirafiori workers were laid off as a result of a strike in the
Paint Shop. The workers, as on other occasions, moved “instinctively” to
blockade the factory gates, stopping movement of goods, and keeping workers in
the plant. But a new factor emerged – the young ones tried to “escape” – they
looked for ways to get round the picket lines, or climbed over the factory
walls to escape into the city.
At the same time, though, FIAT
union officials make it clear that the internal forms of struggle over specific
issues have not fallen off (e.g. where brief strikes over specific issues
develop into internal marches, cortei,
informal meetings and short occupations). The younger workers are active over
questions concerning the organisation of work and problems
of the working environment. In the words of one trade union official:
“I wouldn't say there has been
a drop in the level of participation in struggles. The young are interested in
different things: they are particularly interested in questions related to the organisation of work. There's a noticeable increase in
activity over this. They've got a much higher level of schooling,
they feel the alienation in the factory much more strongly than the older
workers. They don't want to go on working in the same position for years. They
very quickly look for a new job. "
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO LEFT
POLITICS?
Does this new composition of
the working class find its organised expression in
the left-wing organisations? We would say no. For a
start, the organisations of the revolutionary Left
are almost wholly absent, in any organised sense. Lotta Continua – who best represented the workers’
struggles at FIAT in the years following 1969 – dissolved in 1977. Workers’
Autonomy, the federated non-party network that was the best expression of the
post-1977 Movement, has been battered into the ground by judicial and police state
repression. Individual members of those movements have had to keep their heads
down in the factory, and some of the best were sacked with “the 61”.
At a political level, there is
a disillusionment with the revolutionary Left
groupings both inside and outside of Parliament. Although this Left has been
the biggest in
As for the Communist Party
(which has been advancing and consolidating), not only does it fail to attract
the young and “marginalised” – it is also in the
front line in persecuting them. The Party is so concerned to establish its
image as a super-respectable governing Party that it has taken up a more
radical Law and Order stance than many right-wing parties. The result is that
it hounds any radical, deviant behaviour – often to
the extent of denunciation to the police. The Party is also dedicated to
restoring Law and Order in the factories: the factories are a place to produce.
Productivity is a great slogan of the Communist Party today. Anyone who does
not identify with productivity becomes an enemy of socialist society, in the
Party’s eyes. In the words of a CP maintenance engineer from FIAT-Mirafiori:
“So, you go and try to explain things to the young ones. If you tell them that work dignifies a man, they laugh in your face. But there is a bit of truth in that. At least work helps you not to be idle, helps you to create. Of course, the main part of the gain goes to your exploiter. But it's in work that you see the weight that you have as a human being, and your ability to use this weight against the employer, to help your class to free itself, to go from being exploited to being the producer, who decides (as Enrico Berlinguer would say) what to produce, and how. I have been doing this for years, and I'm lucky. My idealism saves me. It enables me to avoid bad thoughts. It prevents me from thinking (like that foreman said) 'FIAT is a shit-hole factory'. I would never say that! It's a very short step from saying FIAT's a shit-heap, to becoming a Red Brigader…"
However, many factors are
going to change the political outlook of workers, both young and old, in the
FIAT factories. The general economic decline will increase unemployment,
particularly among the young; this will alter attitudes towards remaining in
the factory. One result of the higher unemployment has been more young people
staying in higher education – so that when they find their first job in the car
factories, they are ready to fight for new things and in new ways. The
reduction in public spending will reduce the number of public service jobs
available for the more educated young people – therefore more will probably
stay in the factory. And inside the plants, the increasing levels of new
technology are going to lead to more and more de-skilling
of the workforce – so that the new automation will increase the tensions and
strains of soul-destroying life in the factory. All this will add to making for
new possibilities of politics in the FIAT factories.
But far and away the most
important factor in changing the political behaviour
of the FIAT workers will be the outcome of the mass struggle against the
Company’s redundancy plans in 1980-1. This struggle has already led to new
forms of struggle and new levels of solidarity, both inside and outside the
factories.
AND
FINALLY....
And finally, here are some
comments by some of the “new workers” of 1978-9, about how they see the
factory:
"Anyway, we young ones go into the factory with a different kind of experience, a less serious way of seeing things; a bit of the outside world comes into the factory with us, and even if it doesn't change it, this feeling exists... Perhaps we've got a different way of seeing our lives. The 8 hours we spend in the factory are like between brackets. When you get out, even if you're a bit tired, you don't go home. For example, I buy about two books every week. I'm interested in psychology, even though for the moment I've no intention of going to university. Many of the others are already at university... I think a lot of them already have diplomas or study in the evenings.
"We work as workers, but we're not. I, at least, don't feel like a worker. I'm hoping to get out fairly soon, and anyway after the first fortnight I'd organised my work as I wanted it without getting too worried about it, and no-one says anything. On the assembly line where I work, for example, there are no fixed work stations. You can change over. So, first thing in the morning there's a scramble for the quietest jobs. They even play cards for it… All of this allows us to regulate our effort to a certain extent..." And as for the idea of the “progressive working class vanguard” at FIAT, a woman worker comments:
“I thought I knew the mythic working class. I've met some chauvinists here who look at my arse, make heavy remarks if I tell them I've been singing and playing guitar with my friends… As soon as I can I'm getting out."
And another:
“A woman on the line is never alone. There's always a queue of males who take it in turns to go and tease her, tell jokes, you know, irritate her. And I'm not prepared to hang round listening to these people. A comrade who came to see me on the line said: 'You've got a fairly cold relationship with the people in your section'. 'Yes', I said, 'but that's the way I wanted it'. And he says: 'No, no, you should talk with them, discuss things.' But what would I discuss – cunt and prick? Because they don't want to know about anything else."
And a young worker from the
Press Shop at Mirafiori:
"Look at me, look at me well. My gym-shoes say discotheque; my shirt says 'extremist'; I've got the hair of a pop-singer; and an ear-ring like a homosexual. Nothing about me says 'worker'! Why? Because those who work with me are dead men, the living dead, working corpses, and if anyone comes into our department, I want them to see that I'm different."
[Ends]
_______________________________________
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