March 5, 2025 • 51 mins
First of a double-episode podcast about the Working-Class Literature Festival held every year in Florence, at the former GKN car parts factory, which was taken over by the workers after they were made redundant in 2021.
In this episode, we talk to working-class author and one of the main organisers of the festival, Alberto Prunetti, as well as former GKN workers Dario Salvetti and Tiziana De Biasio. We discuss the history of the struggle at GKN from the redundancies to the workers' takeover and 'permanent union assembly' at the factory.
We also dive into how the idea for the Working-Class Literature Festival at the factory began, and how the first two events were organised (despite repeated attempts at sabotage).
Full show notes including further reading, photos, a documentary about the GKN struggle, and a full transcript are available on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/wcl10-11-florence-working-class-literature-festival/
Acknowledgements
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
In this episode, we talk to working-class author and one of the main organisers of the festival, Alberto Prunetti, as well as former GKN workers Dario Salvetti and Tiziana De Biasio. We discuss the history of the struggle at GKN from the redundancies to the workers' takeover and 'permanent union assembly' at the factory.
We also dive into how the idea for the Working-Class Literature Festival at the factory began, and how the first two events were organised (despite repeated attempts at sabotage).
Full show notes including further reading, photos, a documentary about the GKN struggle, and a full transcript are available on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/wcl10-11-florence-working-class-literature-festival/
Acknowledgements
- Many thanks to Antonella Bundu for doing the voiceover for Tiziana's audio
- Many thanks also to Alberto Prunetti and Edizioni Alegre for giving us permission to reproduce photos from previous years' festivals
- Thanks to all our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jamison D. Saltsman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano
- Our theme tune for these episodes is ‘Occupiamola’ (or ‘Let’s Occupy It’) as sung on a GKN workers’ demonstration in 2024. Many thanks to Reel News London for letting us use their recording. Watch the documentary it's taken from here
- This episode was edited by Tyler Hill
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In July twenty twenty one, over four hundred workers at
the DK and Car Parks factory on the outskirts of
Florence were told that they would lose their jobs. In response,
workers seize the factory, and in the past four years
their demands have developed beyond just stopping the redundancies, but
to restart in production under workers' control, building ecological goods,
(00:20):
and promoting green, community controlled energy. And as if that
wasn't enough, since twenty twenty three, the factory has also
become the site of the annual Festival of Working Class Literature.
The third installment at this festival will take place this
year in April twenty twenty five. This is Working Class Literature. Sorry,
(01:07):
before we start, just a quick note to say that
we're only able to continue making these podcasts, both Working
Class History and Working Class Literature because of the support
of our listeners on Patreon. If you like what we
do and want to help us with our work, join
us on patreon dot com slash working Class History, where
you can get benefits like early access to episodes, exclusive
(01:28):
bonus content, discounted books, merch and more. For instance, Patreon
supporters can also listen to both episodes about the Festival
of Working Class Literature now and also have access to
our two Patreon only series, Radical Reads and fireside Chat
link in the show notes. On the fourth of April
this year, a weekend of readings, discussions and performances will
(01:50):
be held in Florence at what will now be the
third annual Festival of Working Class Literature, and as in
previous years, the organizers are encouraging people from all over
the world to attend. However, while literary festivals are usually
rooted in spaces linked to publishing or academia, and often
bankrolled by businesses looking for nice pr to cover their
(02:11):
involvement in genocide or environmental destruction, this festival is very different.
Held at the former GK and Car Parts factory in
Campubisenzio on the outskirts of Florence, it emerged from the
struggle of over four hundred workers who were made redundant
in twenty twenty one. So to tell the story of
this festival, it's essential first to tell the story of
(02:32):
those workers and their struggle.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Everything is started in July twenty twenty one, but there
is a kind of prep well. In some way we
must go back to something that happened not in Florence,
but in England.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
This is Alberto Brunetti, an Italian working class offer and
one of the main organizers of the festival.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
GKN is a British company and they are a corporational
working in the automotive field. But in two thoy eighteen,
the relevant and productive because they were not really in
a bad economic situation corporation was acquired by another corporation, Merors.
(03:21):
It is a stranger player because Melros is not really
working in the automotive They are more kind of financial player.
What they do is to buy companies to relocate plants,
maybe in Eastern Europe after firing workers, and then they
(03:43):
sell again the factories, so they don't really produce. They
earn money more in finance and real estate. So it
seems as soon as after Merrors acquired the GKN they
started to close the plants in Europe in the UK
as well, because they close Berminga and also plants in
(04:09):
Germany and also Florence or better cant be business that
is quite close is the industrial area north to Florence.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
This kind of company which produces nothing but merely invests
and speculates around commercial real estate, or acts as a
consultant helping companies quote unquote maximize efficiency is an increasingly
common feature in today's global capitalist economy.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
His main slogan is to buy, to improve, and to resell.
So you have to understand that to improve means cutting
jobs closing plants in order to gain financial profits from
productive groups.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
This is Dario Salvetti, a worker the former GKN factory
and spokesperson for the factory active Here, Dario explains how
the company tried to trick workers to keep them away
from the factory while they tried to close it down.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It was Friday, nine July twenty one. We received a
day off, a collective day off holiday. The excuse was
that the production of Featle was slowing down a little bit,
so everybody could stay at Homb for one Friday. While
we were at Homb, we'll receive the mail in which
(05:30):
they told us that the plant was shut down suddenly
and totally, and that we were invited not to come
back to our job place nevermore. After one hour, we
decided to gather in front of the factory and retake
(05:51):
our presence inside the factory, and we started what we
call permanent assembly. We were forty under workers at the time.
Now we have remained one hundred and twenty. It's now
more than three years that we go on with the
permanent assembly of the workers. So to sum up, the
(06:13):
history of kN is a history that contains a lot
of histories. You could say that it's the history of
the transformation of a productive factory into real estate investment.
Is the history of the loss of jobs inside the
automotive sector. Is the history of the impact of the
(06:34):
financial international funds and the finance civization of the economy
on the productive forces.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Now is also the history.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Of the longest workers resistance. For what we know, at
least in the history of the Italian working class movement.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
The workforce at the GKN factory is almost entirely male,
the only woman being Titsiano Dibiazio, who worked with the
cleaning tractor. Here she explains how she joined the factory,
her role in disciplining union members, and how the company
retaliated when she refused to do so.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
In da.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I started working at CHICKN in twenty twelve, working for
an external contractor, and I was the only woman working
in the workshop. I was responsible for coordinating the cleaning services,
so every morning I had to rush to make sure
the production areas were sided up, Otherwise the first shift
workers who started at six would complain about finding everything
(07:36):
in this array. When I had the interview to join
the factory, the managers from GKN and the executives of
the subcontracting company were present. My main responsibility was personnel
management and acting as an intermediary with a labor consultant
and the GKN management. There were three contracts, cleaning services,
(07:57):
goods handling, and quality control. The cleaning services were mostly
handled by women, while the other two were almost entirely
carried out by foreign workers, mostly Romanian and Albanian men.
They told me it wouldn't be easy dealing with them
because before me they had been a man and it
hadn't gone well at all. So they thought a woman
(08:20):
might be more suitable because women are supposed to be
treated with special respect. No one would say to a woman,
I'll wait for you outside, or i'll beat you up
when you go out. At that point in time, I
was also useful because they told me they needed to
get rid of a few problematic people. These were the
ones who had been unionized so for every minor infraction,
(08:43):
I had to report it and issue disciplinary actions so
that after the third one they could be fired. At first,
I played that role because I desperately needed paycheck, and
especially because they were sexist and misogynistic. They played a
lot of pranks on me. Over time, I got to
know my colleagues, and I started to see them not
(09:04):
just as men, but as workers, just like my husband,
just like my father, workers who if one of them
got fired, would be ready to go on strike all together,
and I had to be on the company's side. I
couldn't strike with them. I began to wonder why they
were so aggressive towards me. Was it because I was
(09:24):
a woman or because I was their boss. I didn't know.
I just knew that I stopped reporting, and those who
once didn't even call me by my name, they only
called me that woman. Later on started calling me Titiana. Strangely, soul.
The factory managers started calling me that woman. So in life,
(09:46):
one way or another, there's always someone who calls you
that woman. Then, after a few years, there was a
change in the subcontracting agreement, meaning the services were given
to another company. Since I had become a problematic figure
for the client. They asked the new company to downsize
me and force me to resign. For a while, I
(10:07):
even cleaned the toilets, but I never give them the
satisfaction of resigning.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
When the layoffs at GKN were announced, Titsiana was one
of the hundreds who lost their jobs. She immediately got
involved in the struggle and is an active member of
the factory collective to this day. Speaking at an event
at the GKN factory in twenty twenty four, Titsiana explains
how quote, gender discrimination is still strong in our society,
and so for me it was important to stay in
(10:33):
that place. I don't want to give up, and I
want to continue to represent that world of different genders
in this exemplary struggle end quote. Another thing that should
be noted is that, unlike much of the coverage in
the mainstream media, the workers at the EXGKN factory do
not describe their continued presence inside the factory as an occupation. Instead,
(10:55):
they use the phrase permanent assembly.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So it's not the question of what we do prefer,
but it's a question of what it is and what
it is not.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
If you think about an.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Occupation of a factory, you could think about a factory
that is functioning very well and the workers decide to
block the factory. This is not our case. We were
working and the private capital decided to fly away from
our factory and to leave the factory as a black hole,
(11:29):
without any kind of direction, without any kind of productive mission.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
You could say.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So in this case, the Italian work workers movement has
tried to define the most legal way in order to
put our bodies into the factory, in order to defend
the factory from what we call the localization, from taking
away the productive means. We are exercising our own right
(11:59):
to stay in a trade union assembly inside our workplace.
But this is an assembly that is not ending, is
a permanent assembly. So it started the nine July twenty
one and it's going on till the moment we think
that the job places are safe and we can start working.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And indeed, when the workers say that since the ninth
of July twenty twenty one, there's been a permanent workers assembly,
they really main permanent.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
There is the trade union garrison. We are twenty four
hours a day, every day, Christmas Day, Easter Day, and yes,
since the nine July twenty one there's always been a
shift of people in the garrison from six morning to
two o'clock in the afternoon, from two o'clock in the
afternoon till ten pm, ten pm in the night till
(12:52):
six am in the morning. We are always there because,
of course, our permanent assembly and our permanent presence to
the garrison is at the moment the only guarantee that
the factory will not be dismantled.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
The ability of the workers can be be sent. So
to react so quickly and effectively to the redundancies was
because they were extremely well organized, both as members of
the Film Metal Workers Union with a strong history of
activity inside the factory, but also in the wider community
outside of it as well.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
There were a lot of links before the shutting down
of the factory.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Partly it was the result of the tradition of.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
This area of Italy, very partisan, anti fascist and radical
democratic tradition that we have in this area. Partly it
was because we succeeded for at least twenty years to
defend the social rights of the workers in order that
our degree of exploitation inside the factory was less than
(13:59):
another factory. This has got an impact on your life
because if you work from Monday to Friday, and when
you stop to work, you're not completely exhausted. You have
the time, and you have also enough wage to do
other things in your life. So we were a factory
full of active people, active in every direction, football trainers,
(14:24):
volunteers in medical assistance, social activists. So when the factory
was closed, there were a lot of people that they've
closed our factory, not just the people that were working
inside the factory. There was a whole movement that fought, Okay,
they're closing the factory that is supporting us, the factory
(14:46):
that is always full of solidarity movements and with social links.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
These links between the GKN workers and the wider working
class and social movements in the region also had a
profound effect on Alberto, who remembers one of those early mobilizations.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
After receiving the dismissi a letter, workers and the union
declared the general strike. They only in two scanny with
speeches in Piazza Santa Croatia in Florence. I realized it
was something important. I already knew a few of the
gk AND workers because they were very active this worker
(15:26):
where they still had the reputation. In two scanny for
their engagements in politics, and I could earn Dariosti, that
is the spokeperson of the workers. He said something that
really struck me because it was more or less what
I was already trying to do with my work as
(15:49):
a writer. No, it was talking with the journalists and
he said, we are not here to tell you our stories.
We are here to our own story. And this drug
me a lot. You know. It was my kind of
manifesto for a working class. I was something that I
(16:10):
was said for years in my books, and now it
was real. It was not something the past. It was
something that was real and now, very often i've been
I was writing on the blue collars of the past.
Like my father that was a welder or not working
in the they had a sanctuary now and now we
(16:33):
had he had this conscious self conscious workers strongly engaged
in defending their wages, talking especially with the much alive language.
It was amazing. They were talking like winner, They were
strong and powerful. It was amazing. Absolutely, it was something
(16:57):
that doesn't happen very often. I was really strang everybody
in during this summer. It was a kind of summer
or love of the working class after years in which
everybody said that the working class doesn't exist, all we're
all middle class, all these kind of rhetorics. You know,
it's true that the political imagicary of the working class
(17:19):
has been defeated many years ago, in the beginning of
the eighties in Italy, and since then there was not
a single not such a strike so strong. And it came,
and it was amazing because they were really greet these
jickn workers all together. Even the school boys in the
(17:43):
were singing their hunt them Ocupiamolaamola.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Is the song that we played at the start of
this episode, and it's frequently sung demonstrations of GKN workers
in Florence. The song is actually adapted from one song
by fans of the local football team Fiorentina, with the
lyrics change to be about the GKN workers struggle. The
mobilizations of GKN workers and their supporters brought huge numbers
onto the streets, and in doing so they brought the
(18:10):
working class back into the public imagination.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
September twenty twenty one to bring forty thousand people to
march through the street of Florence. It was impressive, forty
thousand people for a worker mobilitation I realized that in
two months the GKN workers in Florence had reconstructed the
working class imaginery. There was the fitty four twenty five years.
(18:37):
I was sent to do the same with my books
like a writer, but in ten years I couldn't do
nothing really in relationship to them. Then in two months,
working in a collective way, they have done much more
than me, because I was working alone as a writer,
even if I'm a working class writer. But this loneliness
(19:01):
is the is the loneliness of the long distance writer,
while they power is the power of the qualitive action.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So it was really powerful for Alberto.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
The strength of the GKN mobilization allowed for a kind
of working class imagination that he had been trying to
produce in his writing. This kind of imagination can be
seen and how the GKN workers have more recently gone
beyond demanding better redundancy pay or their old jobs back,
but rather the wholesale renewal of production under workers' control
to build ecologically sustainable goods like pedal powered cargo bikes
(19:40):
and solar panels, with a view to promoting democratic, community
controlled renewable energy.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
As that here explains, you don't have to imagine that
one day people have gathered in a meeting and have
started to say, okay, let's reconverse the factory. It has
been a process, in a process in which we have
just answered the vacuum that the capital has created against us.
(20:06):
The layoffs were declared in July twenty one. The Italian
law gives seventy five days for the conversion of this
procedure of layoffs in a definitive decision. We had time
to stop these decisions since till the September twenty one.
We call it three big demonstration. The biggest one was
(20:29):
with forty thousand people, and the Florence Labor Court declared
illegal the procedure of layoffs against us. So the ownership
was condemned not to avoid the layoffs, but to repeat
(20:49):
the legal procedure of layoffs. But what happened is that
they had burned their fingers on the first procedure of layoffs,
so they didn't restart with the layoffs, and they decided
probably to leave us in a kind of limbo. So
in September twenty one we were not fired officially. We
(21:10):
were completely arid with all the full rights we also
received for a period of the wage, so we received
the wage without working, but we were left in a
vacuum because there was nothing to do. They didn't bring
back the production to us. So we were in a factory,
a factory that is also a quite new factory with
(21:32):
a lot of new machineries, and so in this vacuum,
we had to refink on how we could restart the
factory with another industry plan. Our first industry plan in
December twenty one was just a proposal general social proposal
in which we told the government, the Telian government, why
(21:54):
don't you nationalize this factory and other factories of the
automotive in order to create a big sector of production
of public means of transport, in order to do a
real transition from the private automatic sector to a real
ecological sector that is not shifting from gas car to
(22:16):
electric car, but it's shifting is shifting from private car
to public means of transports. Of course, they didn't give
us any answer, and it was not possible for us
to achieve this plan by our own because it was
a social general plan. In January twenty two, another ownership,
(22:36):
private ownership came a new owner both the factory, but
it was something very suspicious in our ideas, because this
owner was the former advisor of the GKN, of the
whole owner. This owner didn't say I'm firing you. This
new owner said, I don't have capitals, I don't have works,
(22:58):
but in some months I.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Will bring I will bring to you new investors.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
So the trick could be to let us there in
the vacuum, waiting for GODO, waiting for something that we
don't know who, we don't know what to do. Weit
so in order that the struggle would expire for tiredness,
we didn't aspire. We called for other demonstration together with
(23:27):
the climate movement. There was another big demonstration in March
twenty two with thirty thousand people, and in October twenty
two it was quite clear and official to us that
there was no industry plan. There was no real intention,
probably of this new owner to reindustrialize the factory. So
this time we had to create our own plan, not
(23:49):
a general plan, but a plan of a standing alone factory,
so not a factory of the automatic center, but a
factory as a single productive cell. It was not easy,
but we decided to try to produce some finished goods
like the cargo bikes and the photogo type panels in
(24:10):
order to have some finished goods that we could bring
by our own to the market to convert the factory,
a former automatic factory to an ecological factory. Of course,
because this plan was made by our own, this plan
should be also based on different social forces, not a
(24:31):
new big private owner, but our own co operative. So
we formed an embryo, an embryo of a workers cooperative.
We called it for a public popular shareholding campaign that
collected the bookings of one million, three hundred thousand euro
(24:54):
stocks option. But it was not enough because the ownership
of all the area, of all the factory that is
a very big factory, is.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Something too big to us.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
We cannot rebuy the factory and we cannot and we
don't want to because it's not our idea that the
workers have to reby with their own.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Money the factory.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
So we have presented a law has been passed from
the regional government in which the regional government could create
a public consortium to take the control of the area.
So this kind of example, this kind of model is
what we have called a social integrated factory. Social integrated
(25:36):
factory means the area is public the production is under
the control of the cooperative, so of the decision of
the workers assembly that is gathering into a cooperative. There
is a social kind of control from below, because we
have thousands and thousands of popular shareholders that are made
(25:59):
by associations, by other cooperatives, maybe by some public institutions
like universities. And also the production is a green production,
and the solar panel production is linked with the energetic
communities that we would.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Like to spread in the whole country.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And the cargo bike production could be linked to the
delivery cooperatives that are trying to transform the delivery, the
urban delivery, especially in something that is not so explotting
as it is nowadays in our cities. We have arrived
with this kind of model, not in one day, not
(26:40):
just deciding that this is the model. It was not
a theoretical discussion. It was answering the fact that to
let us get exhausted by the struggle, the private capitally
has just escaped living a black hole as a factory,
and using against the factor that in this society the
(27:02):
private capital is the only one that can decide life
and death of production.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
This plan was something which emerged directly from the conditions
of the GK and workers struggle. It emerged from the
strength and resolve that so inspired Alberto during those first
protests in the summer of twenty twenty one. And it
would be shortly after those protests that these ideas of
struggle and literature and the working class imagination would crystallize
(27:29):
into something more concrete for him.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
After these forty thousand people parade more or less a
month later, it was already fall twenty twenty one, I
got an invitation from the Working Class of Writers Festival
in Bristol. That was I first the first working class
a literal tool festive and in Europe I was invited.
(27:51):
It was a great opportunity for me because I was
happy to go back to Bristol, the city where I
wore work as an emmigrant worker from Southern Europe more
than twenty years ago, and in which I learned a
bit of English or cleaning the toilets and working as
(28:12):
a kitchen assistant. And it was the place in which
I discovered the British working class literature that was so
important to me for my work later on.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
The experience is that Alberta mentions here about his time
living and working in Bristol makeup his novel Down and
Out in England and Italy, translated and published in twenty
twenty one by Scribe Publications. The book actually got a
very unsympathetic review in the British right wing rag the
Daily Mail. In that review, the journalist describes Alberta as
a quote very sweary, grizzled old Italian lefty end quote.
(28:49):
Will include a link to the book in the show notes.
The Working Class Writers Festival in Bristol was an excellent event,
but for Alberto there was also something missing from it.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Was a great opportunity, but I also could feel the
distance from the kind of workers' atmosphere that we had
in Italy in that days, because we had a mobilitation
that means a fight inside the class strike. In some way,
(29:20):
Bristol festival was more a kind of cultural thing. So
I had the idea that we should organize a festival
in Florence, not for the workers, but with the workers.
That means that the workers should be leaders in these things.
In some way. I start to spoke with a few
(29:42):
of them, and this idea was some way interesting. But
they were also fighting for something that, according to a
lot of them were more important, of course their wages. Okay,
so some people say to me, yes, it's good. Other
told me yeah, but we have fishly to fight for
(30:03):
the wages. So with a few workers they were we
organized something that was called cultu rat convergence convergence autale.
It was a kind of a small group within the
workers collective. At the beginning, they were only organized small
event or even big one, but cultural event like a
(30:25):
book presentation. Brook talks about literature just in this big
square close nearby the factory, the GKN factory. My idea
was still that one to organize not a small talk
or a book presentation, but a huge festival. But it
(30:47):
took time because it's not something that you can do
it out of the blue. No, So we started. We
managed finally in twenty twenty two to create a working gloup,
a kind of new cultural convergence group, putting together a
few workers from the GCKN collective and then some other
(31:13):
workers of the publishing industry, plus several activists of the songs.
That is the kind of society of mutual aid. It's
something that had a longer tradition in the past, the
last century. In Italy. So we put all these people
(31:33):
together to work to build a new festival, and I
was asked to be the so called artistic director. This
kind of cultural marketing neologies. So I engaged myself to
create a program in order to give shape to the
fifth edition of the Working Class Literature Festival in Italy.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
However, more conventional literary festivals usually get some kind of
financial backing from either publishers or big money sponsors. The
Festival Working Class Literature had neither. Instead, the festival relied
on the solidarity of social movement institutions.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
It wasn't easy. He mentioned the songs about Archie Tuscana.
Archie is a deeply rooted organization in Tuscany. You find
an archie in every small village in Tuscany, and they
are kind of, I would say, places that in some
way nearly a pub in a way more social center, okay,
(32:41):
but belonging from the left and the labor movement, and
you find a lot of them all around Florence. We
had all this network of a small archie and strongly
related to the place, to the territory, coming out from
even before from the resistance a year and then from
(33:02):
the sixties, the labor of struggles and so on.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
However, solidarity obviously took the form of huge amounts of food.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
And this network mutual aid was already giving strength to
the mobilization. And they also enabled us to organize the festival,
because you need money to do things, unfortunately, and we
don't have money, so how to organize something like that.
(33:32):
I think that we receive this help from these community
centers with kitchen managable by very quite old women in
their seventeen some times with great using kitchen skills. They
start to cook for popular dinner with the goal to
(33:54):
rise money for the festival. So there were these women
that start making thousands of these m or tele mujelani.
There are kind of ravioli stuff with potatoes and then
they are topped with the meat sous kind of ragou,
sometimes even a ship or ragu that is quite heavy,
(34:17):
but it's typical to complete designs, so it's very good.
And they were cooking or to say, pantegoralic quantity of
this tortelli with ragu, organizing dinner of solidarity. I think
that these women have been very helpful for the festival
of working class literally but also for the resistance funds
(34:41):
of the workers. And in some way it's possible that
the help of these women something that the young people
in the meurors offices could not really understand. Through these people,
these women, we went outside their game. Their plan was
(35:02):
to close plant and firing the workers, but they didn't
realize that close to the plants there was a community.
These workers were not single alone character as they teach
you in the business school. These workers were real flesh
(35:23):
and bones people with connection of solidarity around them, not
only from the left, even from small sometimes Catholic parishes,
or there were also relationship with sports for instance. So
there were different communities involved all around the GKN workers
(35:47):
in Florence, and this communitary helped is something that allowed
the worker to fight and us with the worker to
organize a this festival.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
The tortelli mugelani was just one of the local dishes
which these women cook to raise funds for the festival.
Another was proposed Limprunetta.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Peposo is the kind of meat that is cooked with
a lot of pepper inside the wine for many many
hours and it's quite heavy, something that if you eat
then you must sleep. I remember once there was a
kind of celebration because the chicken and workers at the
(36:31):
organize a kind of meeting just to thank all the
social centers community centers in the province of Florence that
supported their struggle. It was kind of nearly wadding with
these people coming from the countryside to the center of
Florence well dressed for once. It was funny because Dario
(36:57):
salvated the spoken parson of the world because said that
the English managers wanted to serve us, and you fed us.
We thought that we would die of anger because of
the bosses, but by instead you make us nearly die
with a big liver with the old proposal. So that
(37:19):
told them thanks.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
For the help, but you nearly killed us with the proposal.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
It was funny. So that's how we raise the money
to organize the festival.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
The funds raised from the enormous amount of labor from
those women who cook Tortelli, Muceelani and proposed ultimately made
that first event in April twenty twenty three possible. And
the theme of that first festival was the past.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
There was a key word that was genealogy, because this
was our idea to go back to the roots of
our tradition, because we were something new in Italy and
there was no working class, a little to in Italy.
According to the critics, till more or less fifteen years ago,
ten years ago out something like this happened out of
(38:10):
what So the first edition of the festival was genealogy,
just to show everybody from where we were coming.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Let me say this that the first edition we had
three thousand and five hundred guests.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
I don't know how to say guest has to do
with the world. That is not really appropriate, because it
seems that if you are a guest, you go to
visit someone just for an act of cultural consumption. I
don't think that that was the purpose of our festival.
It was an act of political.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
Engagement, absolutely so it was absolutely different from all the
cultural festival that are quite spread everywhere in Italy.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
One way this difference manifested was in how into why
the festival was with the fate of the workers in
Camp be sent and how they similarly came on the fire.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
One week before the festival, there was a street demonstration
in which we had enough people, not that much, not
like in September. The idea was of this street parade
was the workers were under siege, you know, by the management,
and they wanted to break this siege through the demonstration.
(39:30):
My feeling after the parade that it was that we
failed to break these siage. One week after it was
the time to kick off the festival, we arrived with
a very low mood, tired. We also receive emails from
the property. They were using classes words and also it
(39:56):
was a more kind of threat. It was not easy.
The owners of the plant did then not really lay
out the red carpets for us during the first edition.
Just one day before the first day of the festival,
the workers they receive an email from the owners of
the plant telling that all the people coming to the
(40:17):
festival Working Class Literal will be prosecuted. It was funny
because this pushed a lot of people to come to
support us.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Darius similarly remembers the boss's response to both the recent
demonstration and the first Festival of Working Class Literature.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Demonstration had a big impact, But it was like if
it was something that.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
The capital and the power was used to.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Okay, if these people want to protest just one day
in the in the streets is not a problem. But
we'll do where they will do their own demonstration where
they will change the chances logan. They will, yeah, will
be a little bit of traffic jam because they will
invite the streets with thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
But it's okay, it's okay, it's routine.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Then then the demonstration will pass and nobody will remember
about the demonstration. One week after this big demonstration, we
did the festival and it was crazy, the reaction of
the capital. I have seen a lot of time the eighth,
the class eight, from the one that's in the top
against the ones that are in the bottom of the society.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
I've seen a lot of time this kind of eight.
But that peculiar eight that I saw spreading for the.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Festival gave us the idea that we were eating a
big point.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And the point is that how you there? How you there?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Fucking peasants? You know a little bit like in in
in the song of Joleno, Are you there fucking peasants?
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Okay, you can, you can take the streets, you can
do them.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
You can't say your fucking slogan with your stinky demonstration.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
But how you there to speak, to write and to
remember that you have your own.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
History, your own literature, your own ability to tell the history.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
The John Lennon song that Daria is referring to here
is the nineteen seventies classic working class Hero, which contains
the lines you think you're so clever and classless and free,
but you're still fucking peasants. As far as I can see,
a working class hero is something to be. As Dario
and Alberta both explain, there was a sense that by
(42:37):
holding a literature festival inside the factory, the peasants were
not staying in their place. However, the second installment of
the factory would suffer an act of sabotage that went
beyond legal threats and public denunciations.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
The worst thing that happened, I don't know who where
the people that did this. In some way it happens
is that before the festival, unknown individuals broke into the
industrial side by night and they were able to destroy
the power plant of the factory. So the factory was
(43:12):
in the darkness with no power, no electricity, and it's
not really easy. I've been told to destroy a power
plant in an industrial plant. It's not like your house.
It's quite complex. You must know where to put your hands.
With no power, you cannot do events and microphone are
not working, so we had to go outside. The festival
(43:37):
was all outdoor in the square in front of the factory. Luckily,
the municipality of camping business prened us the public usage
after this kind of intimidation that was more kind of
mafia style act. I don't know where these people, we
had no proof. We don't really know. We just know
(43:59):
that there was no power, that's it. And so we
had to reorganize everything. There was no stash for where
to find the quick stash. We decaid to rent the
track in order to use the flatbed as a stash.
And it was funny because there was a great solidarity.
(44:19):
For instance, the owner of the track, once he learned
that it was the GK and workers asking for the track,
he gave them for free for three days, so we
had Greek solidarity on the one hand. On the other hand,
still this violence of the power. For instance, there was
(44:40):
a drawne just spying us from above for three days.
So I don't think it was the law. But there
were some bad guys turning around ourself, people with kind
of faced more like gangster movie. Okay, just taking photos
(45:01):
with mobiles and so on. That is something that doesn't
happen to you if you go in a middle class
festival to talk about culture. You know, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
So you could think that workers that do have so
big ideas of a festival gathering thousands of people would
be some kind of heros for the present society. This
present society that always say that you have to be
multi skilling, converting yourself. We were workers without wages able
(45:33):
to organize a festival that is impacting.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
On thousands of people.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
So we were showing that we are good workers, that
we are people that should be hired not fired.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
But that was not the case. It's fun if you
tried to do a festival with the working class for
the working class in the field of culture, that's what
you get. Drown and bad guy around you, someone unknown
cut your power. They tried to cut the power to
a working class festival. It's amazing. No. I think in
(46:08):
some ways also that means that we were effective, that
we were a threat for them. Otherwise, why all these energy?
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yet despite all these difficulties, the festivals have been a
huge success.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I remember that the beginning there were not many people.
Then after thirty minutes there was a long, long queue
and we had hundreds of people coming inside, middle class people,
working class people, families with children, teachers, researchers, students, activists,
all people of any kind of age, any class, but
(46:47):
all full of solidarity. And it was it was strong.
We really break the siege. We want that match. At
least after the parade we were not able to win
after the festival. At least we won and we could work,
the worker could breed. We had lots of great repelds
(47:09):
from the press, even because it was something new. Nobody
had done something like that to bring culture, books writer
inside the factory, because factory, according to the bosses, they
have to be and close are. But in the sixties,
our fathers they had a strong fight and they also achieved.
(47:34):
The right to culture is something that every big factory
must acknowledge, the right to culture. It's not professional for mention,
culture means theater means violin, music plays.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Statuto. The laboratory that Alberto mentions here is a piece
of legislation in Italy. The outlines workers' rights in the
country past in nineteen seventy protected workers around a number
of things like disciplinaries and the right to join a
trade union. The immediate context for this was a huge
wave of militant strike action taken by Italian workers in
(48:09):
nineteen sixty nine in what was known as the Hot Autumn.
We'll cover the Hot Autumn in more detail in our
upcoming series on the Italian struggles of the sixties and seventies.
But what's interesting here is that the Statorto de laboratory
doesn't just include bread and butter economical workplace rights, but
that the struggles of those workers, as Alberta mentioned, also
(48:30):
won the right to culture, as outlined in Artcle eleven
on cultural, recreative and welfare activities.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
According to us is the bread and the roses. So
our festival was the roses part and while the owners
were not even giving the money for the bread.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
That's all we have time for in today's episode.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Join us.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
In part two, we'll discuss what went on at the
previous festivals, including conversations with two participants, the authors, Anthony
Cartwright and Claudia do Rastanti. We'll also be discussing this
year's festival and the future of the GK and workers struggle.
As always, the factory collective and festival organizers are encouraging
people from all over the world to attend, so if
(49:49):
you have an interest in working class writing and the arts,
do think about making it over to campub sensor this year.
Entry to the festival is free, just turn up and
take part, and if you like to support the struggle
at GKN, then do consider making a contribution to their
solidarity fund. Full details for all of this in the
show notes. It's only support from you, our listeners, which
(50:11):
allows us to make these podcasts, so if you appreciate
our work, please do think about joining us at patreon
dot com slash working Class History link in the show notes.
In return for your support, you get early access to content,
as well as ad free episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted
merch and more. And if you can't spare the cash,
absolutely no problem. Please just tell your friends and family
(50:34):
about this podcast and give us a five star review
on your favorite podcast app. If you'd like to learn
more about the festival, with the GKN Struggle or any
of the authors that we speak to in these episodes,
then do check out the web page where you'll find images, videos,
a full list of sources, further reading and more link
in the show notes. Thanks also to our Patreon supporters
(50:55):
for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jameson D. Saltzman, Jazz,
Fernande Lopez Ojeda, and Jeremy Kuizimano. Our theme tune for
these episodes is Occupiamola or Let's occupy it, as sung
on a GK and workers demonstration in twenty twenty four.
Many thanks to Real News for letting us use their recording,
(51:15):
and you can find a link to the documentary it's
taken from on the web page for this episode. This
episode was edited by Tyler Hill. Anyway, that's it for today.
Hope you enjoyed the episode and thanks for listening.
In July twenty twenty one, over four hundred workers at
the DK and Car Parks factory on the outskirts of
Florence were told that they would lose their jobs. In response,
workers seize the factory, and in the past four years
their demands have developed beyond just stopping the redundancies, but
to restart in production under workers' control, building ecological goods,
(00:20):
and promoting green, community controlled energy. And as if that
wasn't enough, since twenty twenty three, the factory has also
become the site of the annual Festival of Working Class Literature.
The third installment at this festival will take place this
year in April twenty twenty five. This is Working Class Literature. Sorry,
(01:07):
before we start, just a quick note to say that
we're only able to continue making these podcasts, both Working
Class History and Working Class Literature because of the support
of our listeners on Patreon. If you like what we
do and want to help us with our work, join
us on patreon dot com slash working Class History, where
you can get benefits like early access to episodes, exclusive
(01:28):
bonus content, discounted books, merch and more. For instance, Patreon
supporters can also listen to both episodes about the Festival
of Working Class Literature now and also have access to
our two Patreon only series, Radical Reads and fireside Chat
link in the show notes. On the fourth of April
this year, a weekend of readings, discussions and performances will
(01:50):
be held in Florence at what will now be the
third annual Festival of Working Class Literature, and as in
previous years, the organizers are encouraging people from all over
the world to attend. However, while literary festivals are usually
rooted in spaces linked to publishing or academia, and often
bankrolled by businesses looking for nice pr to cover their
(02:11):
involvement in genocide or environmental destruction, this festival is very different.
Held at the former GK and Car Parts factory in
Campubisenzio on the outskirts of Florence, it emerged from the
struggle of over four hundred workers who were made redundant
in twenty twenty one. So to tell the story of
this festival, it's essential first to tell the story of
(02:32):
those workers and their struggle.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Everything is started in July twenty twenty one, but there
is a kind of prep well. In some way we
must go back to something that happened not in Florence,
but in England.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
This is Alberto Brunetti, an Italian working class offer and
one of the main organizers of the festival.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
GKN is a British company and they are a corporational
working in the automotive field. But in two thoy eighteen,
the relevant and productive because they were not really in
a bad economic situation corporation was acquired by another corporation, Merors.
(03:21):
It is a stranger player because Melros is not really
working in the automotive They are more kind of financial player.
What they do is to buy companies to relocate plants,
maybe in Eastern Europe after firing workers, and then they
(03:43):
sell again the factories, so they don't really produce. They
earn money more in finance and real estate. So it
seems as soon as after Merrors acquired the GKN they
started to close the plants in Europe in the UK
as well, because they close Berminga and also plants in
(04:09):
Germany and also Florence or better cant be business that
is quite close is the industrial area north to Florence.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
This kind of company which produces nothing but merely invests
and speculates around commercial real estate, or acts as a
consultant helping companies quote unquote maximize efficiency is an increasingly
common feature in today's global capitalist economy.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
His main slogan is to buy, to improve, and to resell.
So you have to understand that to improve means cutting
jobs closing plants in order to gain financial profits from
productive groups.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
This is Dario Salvetti, a worker the former GKN factory
and spokesperson for the factory active Here, Dario explains how
the company tried to trick workers to keep them away
from the factory while they tried to close it down.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It was Friday, nine July twenty one. We received a
day off, a collective day off holiday. The excuse was
that the production of Featle was slowing down a little bit,
so everybody could stay at Homb for one Friday. While
we were at Homb, we'll receive the mail in which
(05:30):
they told us that the plant was shut down suddenly
and totally, and that we were invited not to come
back to our job place nevermore. After one hour, we
decided to gather in front of the factory and retake
(05:51):
our presence inside the factory, and we started what we
call permanent assembly. We were forty under workers at the time.
Now we have remained one hundred and twenty. It's now
more than three years that we go on with the
permanent assembly of the workers. So to sum up, the
(06:13):
history of kN is a history that contains a lot
of histories. You could say that it's the history of
the transformation of a productive factory into real estate investment.
Is the history of the loss of jobs inside the
automotive sector. Is the history of the impact of the
(06:34):
financial international funds and the finance civization of the economy
on the productive forces.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Now is also the history.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Of the longest workers resistance. For what we know, at
least in the history of the Italian working class movement.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
The workforce at the GKN factory is almost entirely male,
the only woman being Titsiano Dibiazio, who worked with the
cleaning tractor. Here she explains how she joined the factory,
her role in disciplining union members, and how the company
retaliated when she refused to do so.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
In da.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I started working at CHICKN in twenty twelve, working for
an external contractor, and I was the only woman working
in the workshop. I was responsible for coordinating the cleaning services,
so every morning I had to rush to make sure
the production areas were sided up, Otherwise the first shift
workers who started at six would complain about finding everything
(07:36):
in this array. When I had the interview to join
the factory, the managers from GKN and the executives of
the subcontracting company were present. My main responsibility was personnel
management and acting as an intermediary with a labor consultant
and the GKN management. There were three contracts, cleaning services,
(07:57):
goods handling, and quality control. The cleaning services were mostly
handled by women, while the other two were almost entirely
carried out by foreign workers, mostly Romanian and Albanian men.
They told me it wouldn't be easy dealing with them
because before me they had been a man and it
hadn't gone well at all. So they thought a woman
(08:20):
might be more suitable because women are supposed to be
treated with special respect. No one would say to a woman,
I'll wait for you outside, or i'll beat you up
when you go out. At that point in time, I
was also useful because they told me they needed to
get rid of a few problematic people. These were the
ones who had been unionized so for every minor infraction,
(08:43):
I had to report it and issue disciplinary actions so
that after the third one they could be fired. At first,
I played that role because I desperately needed paycheck, and
especially because they were sexist and misogynistic. They played a
lot of pranks on me. Over time, I got to
know my colleagues, and I started to see them not
(09:04):
just as men, but as workers, just like my husband,
just like my father, workers who if one of them
got fired, would be ready to go on strike all together,
and I had to be on the company's side. I
couldn't strike with them. I began to wonder why they
were so aggressive towards me. Was it because I was
(09:24):
a woman or because I was their boss. I didn't know.
I just knew that I stopped reporting, and those who
once didn't even call me by my name, they only
called me that woman. Later on started calling me Titiana. Strangely, soul.
The factory managers started calling me that woman. So in life,
(09:46):
one way or another, there's always someone who calls you
that woman. Then, after a few years, there was a
change in the subcontracting agreement, meaning the services were given
to another company. Since I had become a problematic figure
for the client. They asked the new company to downsize
me and force me to resign. For a while, I
(10:07):
even cleaned the toilets, but I never give them the
satisfaction of resigning.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
When the layoffs at GKN were announced, Titsiana was one
of the hundreds who lost their jobs. She immediately got
involved in the struggle and is an active member of
the factory collective to this day. Speaking at an event
at the GKN factory in twenty twenty four, Titsiana explains
how quote, gender discrimination is still strong in our society,
and so for me it was important to stay in
(10:33):
that place. I don't want to give up, and I
want to continue to represent that world of different genders
in this exemplary struggle end quote. Another thing that should
be noted is that, unlike much of the coverage in
the mainstream media, the workers at the EXGKN factory do
not describe their continued presence inside the factory as an occupation. Instead,
(10:55):
they use the phrase permanent assembly.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So it's not the question of what we do prefer,
but it's a question of what it is and what
it is not.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
If you think about an.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Occupation of a factory, you could think about a factory
that is functioning very well and the workers decide to
block the factory. This is not our case. We were
working and the private capital decided to fly away from
our factory and to leave the factory as a black hole,
(11:29):
without any kind of direction, without any kind of productive mission.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
You could say.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So in this case, the Italian work workers movement has
tried to define the most legal way in order to
put our bodies into the factory, in order to defend
the factory from what we call the localization, from taking
away the productive means. We are exercising our own right
(11:59):
to stay in a trade union assembly inside our workplace.
But this is an assembly that is not ending, is
a permanent assembly. So it started the nine July twenty
one and it's going on till the moment we think
that the job places are safe and we can start working.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And indeed, when the workers say that since the ninth
of July twenty twenty one, there's been a permanent workers assembly,
they really main permanent.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
There is the trade union garrison. We are twenty four
hours a day, every day, Christmas Day, Easter Day, and yes,
since the nine July twenty one there's always been a
shift of people in the garrison from six morning to
two o'clock in the afternoon, from two o'clock in the
afternoon till ten pm, ten pm in the night till
(12:52):
six am in the morning. We are always there because,
of course, our permanent assembly and our permanent presence to
the garrison is at the moment the only guarantee that
the factory will not be dismantled.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
The ability of the workers can be be sent. So
to react so quickly and effectively to the redundancies was
because they were extremely well organized, both as members of
the Film Metal Workers Union with a strong history of
activity inside the factory, but also in the wider community
outside of it as well.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
There were a lot of links before the shutting down
of the factory.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Partly it was the result of the tradition of.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
This area of Italy, very partisan, anti fascist and radical
democratic tradition that we have in this area. Partly it
was because we succeeded for at least twenty years to
defend the social rights of the workers in order that
our degree of exploitation inside the factory was less than
(13:59):
another factory. This has got an impact on your life
because if you work from Monday to Friday, and when
you stop to work, you're not completely exhausted. You have
the time, and you have also enough wage to do
other things in your life. So we were a factory
full of active people, active in every direction, football trainers,
(14:24):
volunteers in medical assistance, social activists. So when the factory
was closed, there were a lot of people that they've
closed our factory, not just the people that were working
inside the factory. There was a whole movement that fought, Okay,
they're closing the factory that is supporting us, the factory
(14:46):
that is always full of solidarity movements and with social links.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
These links between the GKN workers and the wider working
class and social movements in the region also had a
profound effect on Alberto, who remembers one of those early mobilizations.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
After receiving the dismissi a letter, workers and the union
declared the general strike. They only in two scanny with
speeches in Piazza Santa Croatia in Florence. I realized it
was something important. I already knew a few of the
gk AND workers because they were very active this worker
(15:26):
where they still had the reputation. In two scanny for
their engagements in politics, and I could earn Dariosti, that
is the spokeperson of the workers. He said something that
really struck me because it was more or less what
I was already trying to do with my work as
(15:49):
a writer. No, it was talking with the journalists and
he said, we are not here to tell you our stories.
We are here to our own story. And this drug
me a lot. You know. It was my kind of
manifesto for a working class. I was something that I
(16:10):
was said for years in my books, and now it
was real. It was not something the past. It was
something that was real and now, very often i've been
I was writing on the blue collars of the past.
Like my father that was a welder or not working
in the they had a sanctuary now and now we
(16:33):
had he had this conscious self conscious workers strongly engaged
in defending their wages, talking especially with the much alive language.
It was amazing. They were talking like winner, They were
strong and powerful. It was amazing. Absolutely, it was something
(16:57):
that doesn't happen very often. I was really strang everybody
in during this summer. It was a kind of summer
or love of the working class after years in which
everybody said that the working class doesn't exist, all we're
all middle class, all these kind of rhetorics. You know,
it's true that the political imagicary of the working class
(17:19):
has been defeated many years ago, in the beginning of
the eighties in Italy, and since then there was not
a single not such a strike so strong. And it came,
and it was amazing because they were really greet these
jickn workers all together. Even the school boys in the
(17:43):
were singing their hunt them Ocupiamolaamola.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Is the song that we played at the start of
this episode, and it's frequently sung demonstrations of GKN workers
in Florence. The song is actually adapted from one song
by fans of the local football team Fiorentina, with the
lyrics change to be about the GKN workers struggle. The
mobilizations of GKN workers and their supporters brought huge numbers
onto the streets, and in doing so they brought the
(18:10):
working class back into the public imagination.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
September twenty twenty one to bring forty thousand people to
march through the street of Florence. It was impressive, forty
thousand people for a worker mobilitation I realized that in
two months the GKN workers in Florence had reconstructed the
working class imaginery. There was the fitty four twenty five years.
(18:37):
I was sent to do the same with my books
like a writer, but in ten years I couldn't do
nothing really in relationship to them. Then in two months,
working in a collective way, they have done much more
than me, because I was working alone as a writer,
even if I'm a working class writer. But this loneliness
(19:01):
is the is the loneliness of the long distance writer,
while they power is the power of the qualitive action.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So it was really powerful for Alberto.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
The strength of the GKN mobilization allowed for a kind
of working class imagination that he had been trying to
produce in his writing. This kind of imagination can be
seen and how the GKN workers have more recently gone
beyond demanding better redundancy pay or their old jobs back,
but rather the wholesale renewal of production under workers' control
to build ecologically sustainable goods like pedal powered cargo bikes
(19:40):
and solar panels, with a view to promoting democratic, community
controlled renewable energy.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
As that here explains, you don't have to imagine that
one day people have gathered in a meeting and have
started to say, okay, let's reconverse the factory. It has
been a process, in a process in which we have
just answered the vacuum that the capital has created against us.
(20:06):
The layoffs were declared in July twenty one. The Italian
law gives seventy five days for the conversion of this
procedure of layoffs in a definitive decision. We had time
to stop these decisions since till the September twenty one.
We call it three big demonstration. The biggest one was
(20:29):
with forty thousand people, and the Florence Labor Court declared
illegal the procedure of layoffs against us. So the ownership
was condemned not to avoid the layoffs, but to repeat
(20:49):
the legal procedure of layoffs. But what happened is that
they had burned their fingers on the first procedure of layoffs,
so they didn't restart with the layoffs, and they decided
probably to leave us in a kind of limbo. So
in September twenty one we were not fired officially. We
(21:10):
were completely arid with all the full rights we also
received for a period of the wage, so we received
the wage without working, but we were left in a
vacuum because there was nothing to do. They didn't bring
back the production to us. So we were in a factory,
a factory that is also a quite new factory with
(21:32):
a lot of new machineries, and so in this vacuum,
we had to refink on how we could restart the
factory with another industry plan. Our first industry plan in
December twenty one was just a proposal general social proposal
in which we told the government, the Telian government, why
(21:54):
don't you nationalize this factory and other factories of the
automotive in order to create a big sector of production
of public means of transport, in order to do a
real transition from the private automatic sector to a real
ecological sector that is not shifting from gas car to
(22:16):
electric car, but it's shifting is shifting from private car
to public means of transports. Of course, they didn't give
us any answer, and it was not possible for us
to achieve this plan by our own because it was
a social general plan. In January twenty two, another ownership,
(22:36):
private ownership came a new owner both the factory, but
it was something very suspicious in our ideas, because this
owner was the former advisor of the GKN, of the
whole owner. This owner didn't say I'm firing you. This
new owner said, I don't have capitals, I don't have works,
(22:58):
but in some months I.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Will bring I will bring to you new investors.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
So the trick could be to let us there in
the vacuum, waiting for GODO, waiting for something that we
don't know who, we don't know what to do. Weit
so in order that the struggle would expire for tiredness,
we didn't aspire. We called for other demonstration together with
(23:27):
the climate movement. There was another big demonstration in March
twenty two with thirty thousand people, and in October twenty
two it was quite clear and official to us that
there was no industry plan. There was no real intention,
probably of this new owner to reindustrialize the factory. So
this time we had to create our own plan, not
(23:49):
a general plan, but a plan of a standing alone factory,
so not a factory of the automatic center, but a
factory as a single productive cell. It was not easy,
but we decided to try to produce some finished goods
like the cargo bikes and the photogo type panels in
(24:10):
order to have some finished goods that we could bring
by our own to the market to convert the factory,
a former automatic factory to an ecological factory. Of course,
because this plan was made by our own, this plan
should be also based on different social forces, not a
(24:31):
new big private owner, but our own co operative. So
we formed an embryo, an embryo of a workers cooperative.
We called it for a public popular shareholding campaign that
collected the bookings of one million, three hundred thousand euro
(24:54):
stocks option. But it was not enough because the ownership
of all the area, of all the factory that is
a very big factory, is.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Something too big to us.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
We cannot rebuy the factory and we cannot and we
don't want to because it's not our idea that the
workers have to reby with their own.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Money the factory.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
So we have presented a law has been passed from
the regional government in which the regional government could create
a public consortium to take the control of the area.
So this kind of example, this kind of model is
what we have called a social integrated factory. Social integrated
(25:36):
factory means the area is public the production is under
the control of the cooperative, so of the decision of
the workers assembly that is gathering into a cooperative. There
is a social kind of control from below, because we
have thousands and thousands of popular shareholders that are made
(25:59):
by associations, by other cooperatives, maybe by some public institutions
like universities. And also the production is a green production,
and the solar panel production is linked with the energetic
communities that we would.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Like to spread in the whole country.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And the cargo bike production could be linked to the
delivery cooperatives that are trying to transform the delivery, the
urban delivery, especially in something that is not so explotting
as it is nowadays in our cities. We have arrived
with this kind of model, not in one day, not
(26:40):
just deciding that this is the model. It was not
a theoretical discussion. It was answering the fact that to
let us get exhausted by the struggle, the private capitally
has just escaped living a black hole as a factory,
and using against the factor that in this society the
(27:02):
private capital is the only one that can decide life
and death of production.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
This plan was something which emerged directly from the conditions
of the GK and workers struggle. It emerged from the
strength and resolve that so inspired Alberto during those first
protests in the summer of twenty twenty one. And it
would be shortly after those protests that these ideas of
struggle and literature and the working class imagination would crystallize
(27:29):
into something more concrete for him.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
After these forty thousand people parade more or less a
month later, it was already fall twenty twenty one, I
got an invitation from the Working Class of Writers Festival
in Bristol. That was I first the first working class
a literal tool festive and in Europe I was invited.
(27:51):
It was a great opportunity for me because I was
happy to go back to Bristol, the city where I
wore work as an emmigrant worker from Southern Europe more
than twenty years ago, and in which I learned a
bit of English or cleaning the toilets and working as
(28:12):
a kitchen assistant. And it was the place in which
I discovered the British working class literature that was so
important to me for my work later on.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
The experience is that Alberta mentions here about his time
living and working in Bristol makeup his novel Down and
Out in England and Italy, translated and published in twenty
twenty one by Scribe Publications. The book actually got a
very unsympathetic review in the British right wing rag the
Daily Mail. In that review, the journalist describes Alberta as
a quote very sweary, grizzled old Italian lefty end quote.
(28:49):
Will include a link to the book in the show notes.
The Working Class Writers Festival in Bristol was an excellent event,
but for Alberto there was also something missing from it.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Was a great opportunity, but I also could feel the
distance from the kind of workers' atmosphere that we had
in Italy in that days, because we had a mobilitation
that means a fight inside the class strike. In some way,
(29:20):
Bristol festival was more a kind of cultural thing. So
I had the idea that we should organize a festival
in Florence, not for the workers, but with the workers.
That means that the workers should be leaders in these things.
In some way. I start to spoke with a few
(29:42):
of them, and this idea was some way interesting. But
they were also fighting for something that, according to a
lot of them were more important, of course their wages. Okay,
so some people say to me, yes, it's good. Other
told me yeah, but we have fishly to fight for
(30:03):
the wages. So with a few workers they were we
organized something that was called cultu rat convergence convergence autale.
It was a kind of a small group within the
workers collective. At the beginning, they were only organized small
event or even big one, but cultural event like a
(30:25):
book presentation. Brook talks about literature just in this big
square close nearby the factory, the GKN factory. My idea
was still that one to organize not a small talk
or a book presentation, but a huge festival. But it
(30:47):
took time because it's not something that you can do
it out of the blue. No, So we started. We
managed finally in twenty twenty two to create a working gloup,
a kind of new cultural convergence group, putting together a
few workers from the GCKN collective and then some other
(31:13):
workers of the publishing industry, plus several activists of the songs.
That is the kind of society of mutual aid. It's
something that had a longer tradition in the past, the
last century. In Italy. So we put all these people
(31:33):
together to work to build a new festival, and I
was asked to be the so called artistic director. This
kind of cultural marketing neologies. So I engaged myself to
create a program in order to give shape to the
fifth edition of the Working Class Literature Festival in Italy.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
However, more conventional literary festivals usually get some kind of
financial backing from either publishers or big money sponsors. The
Festival Working Class Literature had neither. Instead, the festival relied
on the solidarity of social movement institutions.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
It wasn't easy. He mentioned the songs about Archie Tuscana.
Archie is a deeply rooted organization in Tuscany. You find
an archie in every small village in Tuscany, and they
are kind of, I would say, places that in some
way nearly a pub in a way more social center, okay,
(32:41):
but belonging from the left and the labor movement, and
you find a lot of them all around Florence. We
had all this network of a small archie and strongly
related to the place, to the territory, coming out from
even before from the resistance a year and then from
(33:02):
the sixties, the labor of struggles and so on.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
However, solidarity obviously took the form of huge amounts of food.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
And this network mutual aid was already giving strength to
the mobilization. And they also enabled us to organize the festival,
because you need money to do things, unfortunately, and we
don't have money, so how to organize something like that.
(33:32):
I think that we receive this help from these community
centers with kitchen managable by very quite old women in
their seventeen some times with great using kitchen skills. They
start to cook for popular dinner with the goal to
(33:54):
rise money for the festival. So there were these women
that start making thousands of these m or tele mujelani.
There are kind of ravioli stuff with potatoes and then
they are topped with the meat sous kind of ragou,
sometimes even a ship or ragu that is quite heavy,
(34:17):
but it's typical to complete designs, so it's very good.
And they were cooking or to say, pantegoralic quantity of
this tortelli with ragu, organizing dinner of solidarity. I think
that these women have been very helpful for the festival
of working class literally but also for the resistance funds
(34:41):
of the workers. And in some way it's possible that
the help of these women something that the young people
in the meurors offices could not really understand. Through these people,
these women, we went outside their game. Their plan was
(35:02):
to close plant and firing the workers, but they didn't
realize that close to the plants there was a community.
These workers were not single alone character as they teach
you in the business school. These workers were real flesh
(35:23):
and bones people with connection of solidarity around them, not
only from the left, even from small sometimes Catholic parishes,
or there were also relationship with sports for instance. So
there were different communities involved all around the GKN workers
(35:47):
in Florence, and this communitary helped is something that allowed
the worker to fight and us with the worker to
organize a this festival.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
The tortelli mugelani was just one of the local dishes
which these women cook to raise funds for the festival.
Another was proposed Limprunetta.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Peposo is the kind of meat that is cooked with
a lot of pepper inside the wine for many many
hours and it's quite heavy, something that if you eat
then you must sleep. I remember once there was a
kind of celebration because the chicken and workers at the
(36:31):
organize a kind of meeting just to thank all the
social centers community centers in the province of Florence that
supported their struggle. It was kind of nearly wadding with
these people coming from the countryside to the center of
Florence well dressed for once. It was funny because Dario
(36:57):
salvated the spoken parson of the world because said that
the English managers wanted to serve us, and you fed us.
We thought that we would die of anger because of
the bosses, but by instead you make us nearly die
with a big liver with the old proposal. So that
(37:19):
told them thanks.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
For the help, but you nearly killed us with the proposal.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
It was funny. So that's how we raise the money
to organize the festival.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
The funds raised from the enormous amount of labor from
those women who cook Tortelli, Muceelani and proposed ultimately made
that first event in April twenty twenty three possible. And
the theme of that first festival was the past.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
There was a key word that was genealogy, because this
was our idea to go back to the roots of
our tradition, because we were something new in Italy and
there was no working class, a little to in Italy.
According to the critics, till more or less fifteen years ago,
ten years ago out something like this happened out of
(38:10):
what So the first edition of the festival was genealogy,
just to show everybody from where we were coming.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Let me say this that the first edition we had
three thousand and five hundred guests.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
I don't know how to say guest has to do
with the world. That is not really appropriate, because it
seems that if you are a guest, you go to
visit someone just for an act of cultural consumption. I
don't think that that was the purpose of our festival.
It was an act of political.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
Engagement, absolutely so it was absolutely different from all the
cultural festival that are quite spread everywhere in Italy.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
One way this difference manifested was in how into why
the festival was with the fate of the workers in
Camp be sent and how they similarly came on the fire.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
One week before the festival, there was a street demonstration
in which we had enough people, not that much, not
like in September. The idea was of this street parade
was the workers were under siege, you know, by the management,
and they wanted to break this siege through the demonstration.
(39:30):
My feeling after the parade that it was that we
failed to break these siage. One week after it was
the time to kick off the festival, we arrived with
a very low mood, tired. We also receive emails from
the property. They were using classes words and also it
(39:56):
was a more kind of threat. It was not easy.
The owners of the plant did then not really lay
out the red carpets for us during the first edition.
Just one day before the first day of the festival,
the workers they receive an email from the owners of
the plant telling that all the people coming to the
(40:17):
festival Working Class Literal will be prosecuted. It was funny
because this pushed a lot of people to come to
support us.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Darius similarly remembers the boss's response to both the recent
demonstration and the first Festival of Working Class Literature.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Demonstration had a big impact, But it was like if
it was something that.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
The capital and the power was used to.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Okay, if these people want to protest just one day
in the in the streets is not a problem. But
we'll do where they will do their own demonstration where
they will change the chances logan. They will, yeah, will
be a little bit of traffic jam because they will
invite the streets with thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
But it's okay, it's okay, it's routine.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Then then the demonstration will pass and nobody will remember
about the demonstration. One week after this big demonstration, we
did the festival and it was crazy, the reaction of
the capital. I have seen a lot of time the eighth,
the class eight, from the one that's in the top
against the ones that are in the bottom of the society.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
I've seen a lot of time this kind of eight.
But that peculiar eight that I saw spreading for the.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Festival gave us the idea that we were eating a
big point.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And the point is that how you there? How you there?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Fucking peasants? You know a little bit like in in
in the song of Joleno, Are you there fucking peasants?
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Okay, you can, you can take the streets, you can
do them.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
You can't say your fucking slogan with your stinky demonstration.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
But how you there to speak, to write and to
remember that you have your own.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
History, your own literature, your own ability to tell the history.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
The John Lennon song that Daria is referring to here
is the nineteen seventies classic working class Hero, which contains
the lines you think you're so clever and classless and free,
but you're still fucking peasants. As far as I can see,
a working class hero is something to be. As Dario
and Alberta both explain, there was a sense that by
(42:37):
holding a literature festival inside the factory, the peasants were
not staying in their place. However, the second installment of
the factory would suffer an act of sabotage that went
beyond legal threats and public denunciations.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
The worst thing that happened, I don't know who where
the people that did this. In some way it happens
is that before the festival, unknown individuals broke into the
industrial side by night and they were able to destroy
the power plant of the factory. So the factory was
(43:12):
in the darkness with no power, no electricity, and it's
not really easy. I've been told to destroy a power
plant in an industrial plant. It's not like your house.
It's quite complex. You must know where to put your hands.
With no power, you cannot do events and microphone are
not working, so we had to go outside. The festival
(43:37):
was all outdoor in the square in front of the factory. Luckily,
the municipality of camping business prened us the public usage
after this kind of intimidation that was more kind of
mafia style act. I don't know where these people, we
had no proof. We don't really know. We just know
(43:59):
that there was no power, that's it. And so we
had to reorganize everything. There was no stash for where
to find the quick stash. We decaid to rent the
track in order to use the flatbed as a stash.
And it was funny because there was a great solidarity.
(44:19):
For instance, the owner of the track, once he learned
that it was the GK and workers asking for the track,
he gave them for free for three days, so we
had Greek solidarity on the one hand. On the other hand,
still this violence of the power. For instance, there was
(44:40):
a drawne just spying us from above for three days.
So I don't think it was the law. But there
were some bad guys turning around ourself, people with kind
of faced more like gangster movie. Okay, just taking photos
(45:01):
with mobiles and so on. That is something that doesn't
happen to you if you go in a middle class
festival to talk about culture. You know, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
So you could think that workers that do have so
big ideas of a festival gathering thousands of people would
be some kind of heros for the present society. This
present society that always say that you have to be
multi skilling, converting yourself. We were workers without wages able
(45:33):
to organize a festival that is impacting.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
On thousands of people.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
So we were showing that we are good workers, that
we are people that should be hired not fired.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
But that was not the case. It's fun if you
tried to do a festival with the working class for
the working class in the field of culture, that's what
you get. Drown and bad guy around you, someone unknown
cut your power. They tried to cut the power to
a working class festival. It's amazing. No. I think in
(46:08):
some ways also that means that we were effective, that
we were a threat for them. Otherwise, why all these energy?
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yet despite all these difficulties, the festivals have been a
huge success.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I remember that the beginning there were not many people.
Then after thirty minutes there was a long, long queue
and we had hundreds of people coming inside, middle class people,
working class people, families with children, teachers, researchers, students, activists,
all people of any kind of age, any class, but
(46:47):
all full of solidarity. And it was it was strong.
We really break the siege. We want that match. At
least after the parade we were not able to win
after the festival. At least we won and we could work,
the worker could breed. We had lots of great repelds
(47:09):
from the press, even because it was something new. Nobody
had done something like that to bring culture, books writer
inside the factory, because factory, according to the bosses, they
have to be and close are. But in the sixties,
our fathers they had a strong fight and they also achieved.
(47:34):
The right to culture is something that every big factory
must acknowledge, the right to culture. It's not professional for mention,
culture means theater means violin, music plays.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Statuto. The laboratory that Alberto mentions here is a piece
of legislation in Italy. The outlines workers' rights in the
country past in nineteen seventy protected workers around a number
of things like disciplinaries and the right to join a
trade union. The immediate context for this was a huge
wave of militant strike action taken by Italian workers in
(48:09):
nineteen sixty nine in what was known as the Hot Autumn.
We'll cover the Hot Autumn in more detail in our
upcoming series on the Italian struggles of the sixties and seventies.
But what's interesting here is that the Statorto de laboratory
doesn't just include bread and butter economical workplace rights, but
that the struggles of those workers, as Alberta mentioned, also
(48:30):
won the right to culture, as outlined in Artcle eleven
on cultural, recreative and welfare activities.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
According to us is the bread and the roses. So
our festival was the roses part and while the owners
were not even giving the money for the bread.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
That's all we have time for in today's episode.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Join us.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
In part two, we'll discuss what went on at the
previous festivals, including conversations with two participants, the authors, Anthony
Cartwright and Claudia do Rastanti. We'll also be discussing this
year's festival and the future of the GK and workers struggle.
As always, the factory collective and festival organizers are encouraging
people from all over the world to attend, so if
(49:49):
you have an interest in working class writing and the arts,
do think about making it over to campub sensor this year.
Entry to the festival is free, just turn up and
take part, and if you like to support the struggle
at GKN, then do consider making a contribution to their
solidarity fund. Full details for all of this in the
show notes. It's only support from you, our listeners, which
(50:11):
allows us to make these podcasts, so if you appreciate
our work, please do think about joining us at patreon
dot com slash working Class History link in the show notes.
In return for your support, you get early access to content,
as well as ad free episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted
merch and more. And if you can't spare the cash,
absolutely no problem. Please just tell your friends and family
(50:34):
about this podcast and give us a five star review
on your favorite podcast app. If you'd like to learn
more about the festival, with the GKN Struggle or any
of the authors that we speak to in these episodes,
then do check out the web page where you'll find images, videos,
a full list of sources, further reading and more link
in the show notes. Thanks also to our Patreon supporters
(50:55):
for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jameson D. Saltzman, Jazz,
Fernande Lopez Ojeda, and Jeremy Kuizimano. Our theme tune for
these episodes is Occupiamola or Let's occupy it, as sung
on a GK and workers demonstration in twenty twenty four.
Many thanks to Real News for letting us use their recording,
(51:15):
and you can find a link to the documentary it's
taken from on the web page for this episode. This
episode was edited by Tyler Hill. Anyway, that's it for today.
Hope you enjoyed the episode and thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!