A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #22-25 - The struggles are not going away. Solidarity with the GKN factory collective (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Turn off that light at the end of the tunnel. Close as quickly as 
possible that gap that has opened and that threatens to let in fresh 
air, clean air. ---- This seems to be the goal of the latest 
institutional maneuvers surrounding the dispute at the GKN plant in 
Campi Bisenzio, which, over the past four years, has dared to go all 
out, demonstrating that workers know how to create an alternative. ---- 
So let's take stock. In December, the Factory Collective, after months 
of struggle, camped out in front of the regional government and 13 days 
of hunger strike, obtained a new regional law allowing the establishment 
of industrial consortia to intervene in crisis situations and a 
commitment from the Tuscany Region to establish a consortium that would 
bring together, together with the workers' cooperative, other public and 
private investors to start production.

This tool, despite all the limitations the Collective itself is open 
about, would reverse the current systematic management of industrial 
crises, which focuses on speculation and offshoring on the one hand, and 
social crisis and unemployment on the other. Furthermore, in this case, 
it would do so by providing the GFF (GKN For Future) workers' 
cooperative with the tools to implement its grassroots ecological 
reconversion plan, supported by a large grassroots shareholder base. 
However, there is no space to launch production, which is why the role 
of the Region and the consortium is crucial.

While this consortium is slow to get started-a bureaucratic delay that 
workers have been denouncing for months as contributing to the 
problem-the Bankruptcy Court has issued an eviction order. The order 
argues that the eviction is intended to protect workers' wages, namely, 
to allow employers to liquidate their movable and immovable assets to 
finally pay these wages. But, a small detail, the owners of the 
building, a series of recently formed real estate companies, are not the 
ones who are supposed to pay the workers' wages.

This move, of course, has the political purpose of depriving the Factory 
Collective-and the large community of solidarity that has formed around 
the plant-of one of its main strengths (i.e., control of the means of 
production) and social connection. This move disguises the operation as 
one aimed at protecting their interests, as the social legitimacy built 
by this struggle is too great to be criminalized. Furthermore, by 
ensnaring the workers' dispute in a series of technicalities and legal 
procedures, they are attempting to make it incomprehensible to most, 
thus muddying the waters and making it more difficult for the Collective 
to communicate the state of the struggle to the outside world.

We've been saying it for four years now: the opposition of institutions 
and private individuals to the GKN issue is not simply a question of 
money. The problem isn't finding a few million euros, which would be 
mere crumbs if we look at public budgets or investors' wallets, but 
rather allowing workers to create an alternative, wresting from the 
hands of the political and economic elites the prerogative of presenting 
themselves as the only option available. Consider the simple fact that 
in recent years, more money has been spent on redundancy payments than 
workers would have needed for reindustrialization. The point here, 
therefore, isn't strictly economic, but rather highly symbolic.

If suddenly a group of workers thinks they can defy the imperative of 
"there is no alternative" by liquidating an entire managerial and 
entrepreneurial class, what might happen? And what if someone else 
decides they can do the same? What if, in the midst of a general 
rearmament, ailing automotive factories refuse to be converted to war 
production because they want to produce for-and not against-the 
community? And what if they win?

This is where a crucial game is being played today. And it becomes all 
the more crucial the more war is planned and society is forced into a 
warlike logic, which leaves no escape routes, doubts, dissent, or 
alternatives.

Today, workers have a plan for recovery. It's a plan for a factory 
socially integrated into the local area. And they have no intention of 
retreating an inch. While much of the confederal union movement boasts 
victory after victory while we suffer a historic defeat, the workers 
have been clear: forward, defeat after defeat, until victory, without 
fear of putting themselves on the line.

To do so, they are calling us to rally together, not with the pretense 
of this being a more important struggle than others, or of having any 
claim to priority over other issues, but to push harder together in this 
delicate and crucial moment, in the knowledge that if we win, if we 
break through this breach, we have set a precedent: we have become an 
alternative in a world where every alternative is denied us. And it is a 
victory that multiplies our energies, hopes, and possibilities.

On July 11th and 12th, our task is to push together with them to reverse 
the balance of power and reject this systematic attempt to settle 
disputes with technical subterfuge and compress the space of the 
imagination within their narrow confines.

Saturday, July 11th, 6 p.m., meet in Piazza Poggi in Florence for a 
concert and march; on July 12th, 10 a.m. in Florence, "General Assembly 
of Popular Shareholders: Towards the Breaking Point?" This will be an 
important moment of collective discussion to decide the next steps in 
grassroots reindustrialization, a reindustrialization that opposes the 
idea of a socially useful economy to the plan of reconverting the 
economy to war.

Paola Imperatore

https://umanitanova.org/le-lotte-non-si-sgomberano-solidarieta-al-collettivo-di-fabbrica-gkn/
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