Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici

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Factories like barracks

FIAT chooses the path of sackings and repression

Following the high percentage of NO votes, abstentions and blank votes at Pomigliano against the agreement signed by the CISL, UIL, UGL and FISMIC, FIAT has begun what can only be described as reprisals against FIOM and SLAI-Cobas members and activists in factories throughout the country.

The climate of intimidation in Pomigliano remains heavy after the courageous NO vote in the workers' referendum and there are now widespread fears that the birth of the NewCo will lead to mass lay-offs. FIAT has responded in a very heavy-handed manner to the wave of strikes at the Melfi, Mirafiori, Termoli and Cassino plants against the changes in shift patterns and the refusal to pay performance bonuses, but above all against the sackings at the SATA plant in Melfi and at the Mirafiori plant. And now a worker from Termoli has been fired. Who will be next?

The decades roll by, but the company has never lost its traditional vocation for inflexibility when it comes to the strategy of the "factory as barracks", which has plagued the bodies and dignity of generations of workers in its (vain) attempt to destroy their fighting spirit and their ability to organize the struggle and the resistance from below, factory by factory.

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FIAT, Telecom... the strategy of the vampire!

Vampires. Real ones. The sort whose thirst for profit, rich earnings and public finance is insatiable. The sort who throw the workers out onto the streets like used rags once they have squeezed all the blood, sweat and tears out of them. Sergio Marchionne, CEO of FIAT, gets by on an annual salary of €5m. Franco Bernabè, CEO of Telecom Italia, struggles on a mere €4.

The former, having closed down FIAT's Termini Imerese plant, has inaugurated a blitzkrieg strategy at the Pomigliano plant: workers can say goodbye to all those regulations and rights they won over decades of labour and social struggles, and any worker who refuses to accept it can go (as happened recently at the Melfi plant, where 4 protesting workers were fired, sparking off a series of strikes all over Italy). The latter has thrown 3,700 workers out of Telecom.

In both cases, these champions of the "nicer" bourgeoisie, so dear to Italy's centre-left parties, are forcing the workers to bear the costs of the restructuring and financial deals that the crisis has provoked. And yet, right in the middle of a crisis, these companies and continuing to make enormous profits and dividends for their shareholders (in the case of Telecom, almost €2bn in 2009) thanks to the support of banks and governments. This is the strategy of the vampire.

This is the giant step of the bosses' offensive: use the crisis as a weapon of social blackmail and use the Berlusconi executive as a tool of political destruction in order to remove legislation on labour rights, just as in the past other governments and indeed the entire State were used.

Read the full statement...

In defence of collective ownership

against the greedy hands of capitalism and bureaucratic state management

The Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici supports the initiatives in defence of the public ownership of water, including the campaign for a referendum by the Forum Acqua Bene Comune which seeks to repeal three articles from laws concerning the environment, energy and economic development, as well as opposing the obligatory enforcement of EU regulations.

By means of these articles, local authorities will be obliged to tender out the running of water services to private companies or mixed public-private bodies where the latter must hold the majority of shares (70% within 2015, with a progressive increase from public to private in companies which are entirely public or mixed).

We are aware that the management of collective resources and property by publicly-run bodies generally produces bad services and bad resource management, as a result of the inevitable ignorance on the part of the state bureaucratic apparatus of the needs and wishes of local communities. We are also aware that this translates into social difficulties, especially for the poorer levels of the population.