August 20, 2025 • 59 mins
Following our double-episode on the Florence Working-Class Literature Festival back in February, our co-host Matt was invited to this year’s festival, recording this episode on-site at the ex-GKN factory in Florence. Featuring the various writers, researchers, organisers, and activists in attendance, this episode captures the atmosphere of the festival at this critical time for the GKN struggle.
Our podcast is brought to you by patreon supporters of both Working Class Literature and Working Class History. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
Taking place on 4-6 April 2025, the opending day of the festival marked the 1367th day since the 400+ workforce at the GKN car parts factory in Florence was first made redundant. They subsequently seized the factory and remain in control of it to this day, despite receiving their third – and now final – redundancy notice in the days leading up to this year’s festival.Recorded on-site at the occupied GKN factory on the outskirts of Florence, this episode features the voices of various writers, researchers, organisers, and activists that we spoke to while at the festival. These conversations took place against a frenzy of activity, both for the festival but also the GKN struggle itself.
Acknowledgements
Our podcast is brought to you by patreon supporters of both Working Class Literature and Working Class History. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
Taking place on 4-6 April 2025, the opending day of the festival marked the 1367th day since the 400+ workforce at the GKN car parts factory in Florence was first made redundant. They subsequently seized the factory and remain in control of it to this day, despite receiving their third – and now final – redundancy notice in the days leading up to this year’s festival.Recorded on-site at the occupied GKN factory on the outskirts of Florence, this episode features the voices of various writers, researchers, organisers, and activists that we spoke to while at the festival. These conversations took place against a frenzy of activity, both for the festival but also the GKN struggle itself.
Acknowledgements
- Thanks to all our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda, Nick Williams and Old Norm
- 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 Jesse French
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Over the first weekend of April twenty twenty five, over
seven thousand people attended the third annual Working Class Literature Festival,
held at a former car Parks factory on the outskirts
of Florence. The opening day of the festival was the
one thousand, three hundred and sixty seventh day since the
workers first seized the plant in opposition to the company's
(00:21):
attempt to shut it down. In the days before the
festival was due to begin, workers received their third and
now final redundancy notice. Yet despite this news, the festival
remained both a buoyant and militant occasion as the workers
push ahead with their plans to reopen their factory as
a worker cooperative building ecological goods. This is working class Literature.
(01:09):
Before we start, 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 bonus content,
(01:30):
discounted books, merch and more. For instance, Patroon supporter has
got early access to this episode with our ads, and
they also get exclusive access to our two Patreon only
podcast series, Radical Reads and Fireside Chat link in the
show notes. You might remember that back in February, we
put out two episodes about the Working Class Literature Festival
(01:51):
in Florence. For the past three years, this festival has
taken place at the former GKN car parts factory that
in twenty twenty one was taken over by its former
employees after they were made redundant, and has been under
their control since. To get a fuller understanding of how
the festival got started and the GKN struggle itself, we
recommend you go back and listen to those episodes first.
(02:14):
But as part of making those episodes, the author and
festival organizer Alberto Brunetti, who we interviewed for those episodes,
suggested that I attend this year's event. I should note that,
unlike normal episodes, the interviews used here were recorded on
site at the festival itself, so apologies in advance for
the quality of some of the audio, which can vary
(02:35):
quite a bit. As such, in April, I made my
way out to Florence to experience it for myself, a
weekend of music, talks, discussions, and performances, not to mention
food and beer that brought together over seven thousand people,
making it easily the biggest working class cultural event in
Europe and perhaps even the world. But more important than
(02:55):
the scale of the event was the way that it
was different from pretty much any other literary event that
I'd been to, even though specifically about working class writing.
As we touched on in the previous episodes, this festival
is not just about increasing working class representation in middle
class dominated areas of society, like publishing in academia. It's
about transforming society itself, something that was evident in the
(03:18):
slogan of this year's festival, We will be Everything. The
result of this is that while there were professional writers
and scholars who are from working class backgrounds or writing
about working class issues, there are also many talks by
people who write and research but might not think of
themselves primarily as writers or researchers.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
My book is about it's some kind of chronicles, it's
some kind of a memoir. It's my first year in
Sweden and they so if you want to know my background,
I'm at high school dropout. I come from Poland.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
This is Daria Bogdanska, a union activist living in Malmo,
southern Sweden, and the author illustrator of the graphic novel
Wage Slaves.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I don't come from.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
A union tradition, you know. I'm now thirty something. When
I grew up, I was kind of maybe considering myself
a leftist, but I have no idea of actual union work.
You know, I was a part of the precarreat and
in this way you read about union traditions, you read
about left wing history, but it's very apps right.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
It's the past.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You don't see, at least me being the like young
millennial leftist. I couldn't relate to this in my daily life.
Just working shit jobs and a way of changing your
conditions would be changing a job instead of taking a fight.
Your European Union opens to Poland, where I go, of
(04:46):
course London, where I did the bike messager work for
a few years.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I consider it a shit job. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I did some bike mechanic jobs, I did some waiting,
I did any any kind of shit job you can
imagine in Spain, in the UK. And I'm kind of
a typical European EU nomad, going and doing different ship
jobs and just finding means to to live, and then
(05:15):
I end up in Sweden. That's actually a fun story
because there is those schools people schools FORCA schooler. It's
some kind of vocational schools for people who didn't finish
high school. So if you don't have a high school diploma,
you can apply for such a school. And I got
information that you could maybe apply to this kind of school.
(05:38):
I always did writing and drawing, so I applied to
comics school. Actually I just want to try something, and
iled that I knew Swedish and my application and I
got in and I was okay, then I'm going to Sweden.
Basically me in my backpack and I've, you know, a
few hundred euros in my pocket. The whole book kind
(06:00):
of depict my first year in Sweden and kind of
my classes with the Swedish system, the clashes of my
imagination of Swedish system as a kind of orderly, bureaucratic
welfare paradise where everybody is equal and you know, the
land of social democracy where maybe shitty jobs would be
(06:22):
less shitty, and what I found out during this first
year that I work in a restaurant there. I work illegally,
even though I'm from EU and I have right to
work in Sweden. I found in some kafkan situation where
you have to apply for this personal number in Sweden,
(06:42):
like social security number in order to have a like
legal job. But in order to get this number, you
have to have a job. So it's a catch twenty
two situation, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
So I work illegally.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I work at a restaurant. It's an Indian restaurant, and
I'm the only white person working there, and I earn
like five years an hour and this is shitty, but
I'm used to shitty, you know. I just need to
pay my rent and I go to work before and
after school. But what I realized is that there's people.
(07:14):
There's a whole karaokee of workers there. And I earn
five euro, which for a Swede is slave wage. But
there is people from Bangladesh who work earn four and
a half a euro. But there is a guy from
Pakistan who earns three euro. And there's you know, well,
I call it a letter of desperation that you know,
(07:36):
more desperate you are for a job for money than
then the last like the last he get paid, and
this is something that pisces me off really and this
is something to push me to try to organize, which
I do formally for the first time in my life.
So this is a story of me going through this
(07:56):
journey kind of awakening in that sense into trying to organize,
trying to organize the kind of precarious situations, try to
also navigate how to organize when there's so much at stakes,
like people who have working visas and risk a lot,
(08:17):
or like some shady connections with the owner who lends
them money or they live at his place, or they
live at the restaurant, you know, and how to organize
in those conditions. That So this is a parallel story
of the union organizing and also me finding my way
in Sweden, finding my life in Sweden, kind of observing,
trying to understand what's going on around me, what's this
(08:39):
country about.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
After this period in her life, Darry began organizing among
market workers with a number of different unions, something that
she continues to do to this day. But one thing
she mentioned was how her writing and her activism are
often in tension with each other when it comes to
competing for her time.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
After I wrote a book.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I mean, there was a lot of interest in the
book because they don't have an immigrant woman talking about,
you know, our own conditions, you know, which I understand
the interest because I prefer to speak about myself. We
migrants speak with our own voices. Then somebody else tells
you about how we have it. So there was a
(09:19):
lot of interest. But I noticed also one thing that
I would be like invited by the major unions to
talk about both the culture sector, and then the unions
would would invite me and I would talk about my
situation in my book, but they like to hear how
terrible it was. But as soon as I came with
(09:39):
some criticism or solutions, as soon as I was showing
some agency, they were not interested anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And after some years.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Of doing this kind of being being like a I
don't know, a spokesperson for migrant in like culture sphere,
like you know, by being a writer, I just got
tired of it and I realize, like shit, I just
want to do organizing. I want to help also other
people who are in a situation like me. So I
started getting more involved with the union. I struggle with
(10:08):
this because sometimes you know, we have this kind of
idea of a successful person who's like both and the
activist and the brilliant thinker and also fantastic organizer and
writer and everything. And I'm like, you know, I'm not
so smart, I'm not so fantastic. Like maybe I cannot
manage to do be everything at once, and right now,
(10:32):
I mean I would manage to do both, and right
now I just out of way. I'm more of a
practitioner right now than talker. But I still think it's
valuable to talk about those things, and I'm really happy
that I did, but I just kind of got impatient,
but just talking.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Daria was just one of the many excellent speakers that
I met over the fest of a weekend. But another
that I had a chance to speak to was Luca Leijang,
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Macau in China, an
editor of the anthology Asian Workers' Stories. In many ways,
Luca's research picks up where Dari's graphic novel left off
in terms of giving a voice to migrant workers, though
(11:12):
in Lucas case, her focus is on those who are
further down what Daria calls the ladder of desperation.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
I wrote my PhD on working class literature in China
and Singapore as a comparative study. One important part of
my research focuses on micro worker writings in Singapore and China.
So in Singapore, just put it briefly, there are a
(11:39):
lot of migro workers come from less developed countries such
as the Philippines, Burma, Bangladesh, and they work there in
those three D jobs such as domestic helpers and construction workers.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Three D jobs here refers to the three d's used
to describe the work done by market workers that is dirty, dangerous,
and demeaning.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
So that's all basically the magrant workers do in Singapore,
but Singapore is not the unique case. They are also
in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan
and China too. In China, I mean slightly different, they're
not transnational workers, but the nature of the work is
(12:30):
the same. So along with my research, I have met
a lot of worker writers who are writing a lot
of things about their life, their job. And I have
also read a lot of older working class literatures from
this region, for instance, those who are actively writing in
(12:52):
the nineteen seventies, and I found it is very different
that how those older group of workers write their life
and work as a working class writers and the contemporary
domestic workers. So after I did my PhD, I was like, Okay,
I really wanted to collect those worker writers to put
(13:16):
them together in one book. I really want to highlight
this kind of collective way of framing workers writing, not
only as individual workers. For instance, a lot of magan
worker writers in Singapore has been framed as migrant writers,
(13:40):
and I have a trouble with that term because in general,
when they talk about magnant writers, it seems worker identity
has been raised or downplayed. So there are a lot
of literal events and activities about megan worker writings in
this region, for instance Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but
(14:04):
I'm always worried about how they downplay the worker aspect
in these writings. And there are a lot of things
also happened within this writing community. For instance, when migrant
workers are writing about their home lives, their personal emotions,
(14:25):
they are very welcomed by the local government's literary events.
But there's a line where when they started writing about
their working conditions as workers, or when they want want
to have some improvements in their life conditions, they are
no longer walcomed in this kind of writing practices. So
(14:50):
I wanted to do a book where I didn't encourage
them to write about their working conditions, but I really
want to put this working class literature class perspective in
this book, and certainly maybe the last one is I
want to kind of I want to the writers know
they are not writing alone. They are workers in different
(15:15):
parts of Asia writing about the writing. So I want
to kind of bring this book to them and let
them know, see, you're not working alone. We have a
lot of people writing on their lives. They are writers
in these collections who are very experienced writers, they have
been writing for years. But the fact is some of
(15:37):
the writers are very experienced ones and they are published
that they are recognized, but some of them are very
very new. And there is also a relatively older worker
writer from Malaysia in this collection, so I found he's
very interesting because he was connected with the older working
(15:57):
class writing in Malaysia in the nineteen seventies. So in
Malaysia in nineteen seventies, Malaysia and Singapore in the nineteen
sixties and seventies, there was a very active working class
writing group who basically of the factory workers or bus
drivers or plantation workers, because there was a very active
(16:21):
working class culture at that time, but now they are
kind of forgotten or marginalized because they're not a lot
of working class literature studies or institutions in that region.
So I read his books. He self published to a
collection of his writings in Chinese, and I read it
(16:43):
and I kind of approached to I asked him, do
you want is that okay if I translate one or
two of your stories to this collection, and he said,
of course. So that's again one of my kind of
hope that I can historic size those writings. And because
(17:06):
those writings are not you know, like speaking of from
working class writing perspective, it's not something that new.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
One of the interesting things about Asian workers' stories is
the range of different jobs and nationalities of its contributors
and how these interact with various literary traditions that inform
their writing.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
There are a lot of domestic workers. They live in
the households, and it is exactly very hard to draw
the line between life and work in a sense where
they work at where the employers live, and they live
there right, so you can see a lot. Their stories
(17:48):
are very kind of centered this household. So it's also
kind of no longer the traditional working class life where
you go to a factory or you go to a
place to work. Maybe Stephanie's story is a very good
(18:09):
example where Stephanie's story the Autobiography of the Other Lady
Gaga is particularly interesting in terms of the form or
the round word she uses. Her stories in this collection
is drawn from this form called dectly in the Filipino
(18:30):
literary tradition, where I think it's similar to flesh fiction
or mini stories or mini fiction in English terms, and
those writings. This genre started at the beginning of twentieth
century in the Philippines after the Philippines in the US War,
(18:52):
and people wrote in this form they published on local
magazines newspapers in their vernacular languages. So she also used
this form for her writings, which I find very interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
The Autobiography of the Other Lady Gaga is a contribution
to Asian workers' stories by Stephanie j Alfarez, a trans Philippine,
a migrant worker who works for almost fifteen years in
Saudi Arabia. As Luca mentioned, the dagli form that she
uses in her story has its roots in the anti
American newspapers and magazines that proliferated after the Philippine American
(19:31):
War at the turn of the twentieth century, But as
the translator's note in the anthology makes clear, the dagli
is also a former vignette or sketch for expressing romantic
love for a woman. This context feels very present in
Alpharez's story, not just in terms of the political origins
of the dagli, but also its roots as a romantic genre.
(19:52):
But those romantic roots contrast starkly with the multiple depictions
of sexual harassment and violence in Alvarez's story and in
dou and So Alvarez powerfully twist those routes into a
sick parody of themselves. Like Lucas says, for domestic workers,
the line between life and work is often hard to draw,
and as can be read in Alvarez's story, the same
(20:14):
can be said about the line between workers issues or
the issues of migrants, women, or LGBT plus communities, particularly
in places like Saudi Arabia, where their vulnerability as oppressed
groups is made worse by the conditions of their employment. However,
Alvarez is not the only writer in the collection to
use form and genre in interesting ways.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Speaking of form, I'm very interested in, for instance, the
form of journal or how they document their factory life
or construction workers life. So I mean those other forms
for other boushease writings or middle class writings, but they
I find those kind of writing from those worker writers
(20:58):
gave a new meaning to those roundwolks. For instance, diary
caeping might be a very kind of I mean, most
of the times we read a diary from writers write
famous writers Virginia vol for others, but they also for instance,
the writer in this book, the last one, M. D.
(21:20):
Shari Fooding. He's from Bangladesh and he used to work
as a migrant worker in Singapore in constructions, and he
published actually two books on his life in Singapore, and
those two books are named as Diary of a Migrant
Worker in Singapore. And again, in terms of form, maybe
(21:43):
keeping a journal or diary was supposed to be very
intimate personal writing, but his writing was meant to be
read by others, others in terms of Singaporean people and
other fellow workers for other different purpose.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Last year on the working Class Literature podcast. We published
a three part series on migrant worker poetry in China,
with a significant focus on the poetry anthology Iron Moon.
One thing that came up during my conversation with Luca, however,
is that those Chinese mirgant worker poets who have been
translated into English themselves often reflect the biases of Western
(22:21):
scholars and translators. If you'd like to listen to our
series and Chinese market worker Poetry, we'll include a link
to it on the web page for this episode link
in the show notes.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
So in China, everything's very complicated, even when it comes
to workers' writing. There are so many workers are writing
in China today or in the past, and I find
this is very interesting in terms of who God translated.
Irol Moon did a great job in terms of how
(22:55):
collectively poets are translated, but there is also a trend
that they are certain type. I would say worker poets
got translated into English, and it's really sometimes I even
feel it depends on who was discussed or written by
(23:19):
Western academics. And maybe this point is controversial, but what
I wrote in my PhD is that there is a
group of underground worker writers or poets. I mean, they're
not like popular in China, but their work are not
(23:43):
talked about by overseas readers or even scholars. So the
first one I found it's extremely important and interesting that
they have a very radical class consciousness. And they secondly,
they write and they want to publish, and they organize
(24:06):
this collective because they want to build up a working
class culture. And that's also paradoxically the reason they stay
largely unknown by most of the people, because they don't
want to get to know by the mainstream media or
mainstream middle class publishing houses. Because in their publication, they
(24:32):
have published three collections of their own works and they
wrote very clearly that so our aim of those writing
and these publications is to build up a working class culture,
and it is from the working class, the workers, the
(24:54):
Chinese workers, and it is for the working class. So
I've found that is extremely interesting and very important if
we want to talk about working class literature, because from
my perspective, a lot of worker writers are consumed today
by the middle class taste and middle class or mainstream
(25:18):
publishing industry, and those writers are very radical also in
terms of why do they write. They see a political
potential there in their writing. They want to change, right,
They want to kind of call for a more collective
(25:39):
way of writing and building up a culture of their own,
and certainly they want kind of working class solidarity from below.
So even in the very beginning, when I approached to
the poet out and writer, he's very kind of suspicious
(26:01):
of me, which is okay. He was like, okay, who
are you?
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Like?
Speaker 4 (26:05):
You can feel he has a sense like I don't
want to be studied, right, So I spent years or
sometimes talk to him and explain my views and build
up these kind of connections with him and as well
as other few writers from this collection. I found that
(26:26):
that's really really important, even in China or in Asia today,
that you know how the worker writers are approached and
how we collaborate with them as academics or translators or
published industries. A lot of worker writers, as far as
I know, are consumed. And I also I wrote about
(26:47):
this in Singapore, like how a worker writer are made
and am made by middle class writers or that industry
in general.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
There's about to be a quick ad break here. If
you'd like to listen to our episodes without ads, then
do support us on Patreon for ad free episodes, as
well as a bunch of other Patreon only content at
patreon dot com slash Working Class History. Luca and Daria
were just two of the incredible speakers at the festival
this year, but there were numerous others in both English
(27:20):
and Italian, and always supported by a seemingly endless network
of volunteer interpreters. More than any one particular talk or performance, however,
what really made the festival so unique was its connection
to the ongoing struggle at GKN, which, as we've mentioned before,
goes beyond the everyday struggle of work and wages towards
(27:40):
something more fundamentally transformative. Over the years that this struggle
has been going on for workers have put together an
industrial plan to reopen the factory as a worker's cooperative,
but not making car parts as they were before. In
the new industrial plan, the GKN workers intend to restart
production making ecological goods like a range of cargo bikes
(28:01):
for fossil fuel free delivery services and solar panels, both
to sell as a product in and of itself and
also for the factory to produce cheap, renewable energy for
the local community. This is all part of the Factory
Collective's plan for what they call a socially integrated public factory,
a factory that will be at least fifty one percent
(28:22):
owned by the workers themselves and responding to the needs
of the local area. To help bring this about, the
GQN Factory Collective proposed a law on public industrial Consortiums,
which will allow public bodies to buy up industrial sites
once companies shut down production. In December twenty twenty four,
this law was approved by the regional government in Tuscany.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
Now, the next step we are struggling for the city
halls and the regional government to airy up in the
process of creating this public consortium that is the one
that they can create in Othersinga, is the season on
our law, in order that maybe in June July they
(29:04):
can start to prepare game with the ownership in order
that this building becomes a.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Public This is Daria Salvetti, the spokesperson for the GKN
Factory Collective, speaking to a group of international attendees this
year's Working Class Literature Festival. Longer term listeners might remember
that we also spoke to Dario in our previous episodes
on the festival. And the struggle at GKN.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
The right wing parties in Toscany are attacking us. They
say that our law of public consul is a law
that brings you back to the.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
Soviets in Toscany.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
I would like to, but it's not the case. It's
a very very moderate law that is simply allows a
public government to say, if there is a factory, you
have to be like that is a factory. You cannot
treat a factory like a real estate investment. This is
the basic purpose of the law, not less, not both.
(30:01):
And we have a fear that the Democratic Party want
to invest in this law because they want to use
it into the electoral field. But we won't succeed because
their will is not what they sometimes do. Because a
party that has been formed in us and ars in
privatizing everything now that they have to a public.
Speaker 6 (30:24):
Feing to those so fail. So there could be also.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
The shot very want to let us win, but they're
not able because they don't have the real mind to
be created something public, so that there would be the
worst scenario that is that in September, when September October,
when the election comes, the right wing attacked us because
we have Richard, no nothing. They attack the Democratic Party
(30:51):
because of Foreman has formed the public consortion that is
not functionate, and that could be the word sinnaty.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
The Democratic Party that Darius were into here is not
the one from the United States, but the main center
left party in Italy, but one which, like many center
left parties across the West, has been firmly near liberal
now for decades. And as Dario explains why the law
itself will open up space for workers to finally take
control of their factory, it cannot simply be left up
(31:20):
to a political party that for years has been dedicated
to privatization. Rather, the plan will have to be fought
for by the GKN workers and their supporters, and as
a result, the plan also includes space for other groups
to be included.
Speaker 5 (31:35):
That moment proposal will be that it's not part will
remain such a part of the factory, so that these
activities will become a regularly and that will be founded
a permanent office of the working class culture, not only literature,
but everything and the other part of the factory, in
(31:55):
the first part producing solar planets, there will be a
part that won't be used by us because our industrial
plan media nine thousand square meters. This is eighty thousand
square meters of the area and thirty five square meters
the fund.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
This permanent office for working class culture that Dadiol mentioned
is part of a plan to start a working class
cultural hub on the site of the former GKN factory.
This cultural hub would include a museum, social and labor
movement archives beginning with that of the Tuscan Metal Workers Union,
are permanent headquarters for the organization of European working class
(32:36):
literature festivals, and an audio visual center including training for
aspiring filmmakers. This is just one of the projects that
will be developed on the site, which will be run
by a cooperative made up not only of the former workers,
but climber and migrants rights campaigners, mutual aid associations and
social centers. The plan is incredible, almost too good to
(32:58):
be true, But as with all the other obstacles that
have gone in their way, the factory collective has a
strategy for overcoming it and turning their plans into reality.
Speaker 6 (33:08):
For or less, we need twelve million euros okay, six
hundred thousand can come from our unemployment benefit, because we
can shift our employment benefit in.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
The properatives we have some ethic financial fund that would
make two millions in loop and ethic bank that make
to two million euros. And then we have another public
sector that would bring into the project like half million.
And then we have like five million that should come
(33:41):
from the bank. Okay, and we are burgaining with some bank.
And as I was saying, they're not yeah because they
are clever or because they won't that our struggle win,
but because this druggle is so popular that it's an
occasion also for the bank to the social wash. We
know this is the game. But it's impossible to start
a factory without alone.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
From a bag.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Unsurprisingly, the plan hasn't been well received by the business community.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
What it's been clear in the last months is that
very is total skeaticism from the industrial sector in Italy
little least, but I think it's something that is zero.
There is total scadism in the chance to produce solar
panels here. The want to leave the technology to China.
And you could say, well, it's better if someone will
do solar panel. I don't mind if we are China
(34:27):
and Italy. Yes and no, it would be better to
produce solar panel with a short chain of value because
of course more kilometers the solar panel do and later
will be the recovery of the energy that the solar
panel produces.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
We had to change a lot of things in the
industry plant.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
For example, we don't want to produce classical solar panel
like the Chinese one or what is We can also
produce those one, but the kind of solar panels that
we want to produce will be solar panel that are
contr customers. I said, in order to be involved in
the existing buildings and not to waste other square meters
(35:09):
of a free ground, for example in the countries. So
everything was difficult, but going quite okay from a day
to another. We started to feel that every private investor
was trying to find an excuse to wit the project.
And the real reason is that then those aspects of
banks are saying it's possible in solar panel in and
(35:33):
they say Mario Draghi, that is the former Prime Minister
of Italy in a recent interviews, say you know, we
have lost the technology, leave solar palet to the Chinese
and we went to our other fie. So it's not
a question that we want to steal solar panelts to Chinese.
We don't want to steal to anybody. We want to cooperate,
(35:54):
not to compete.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
This context of struggle of work has taken over a
fanct and reimagining what they could do with it filled
the Literature Festival with so much energy, and as in
previous years, one of the ways that this energy manifested
itself was in a demonstration of thousands of attendees through
the streets on the outskirts of Florence, singing as always
(36:17):
the GKN workers anthem occupiamola, which in English translates to
let's occupy it. Not that final chant siamo tuti g
(37:04):
capa translates as we are all GKN. This was something
more than a simple literary festival. Of course, It was
also that, with the kinds of interesting speakers and discussions
that you would expect at such an event anywhere in
the world. But it was also something else as well.
It was working class literature as an active part of
(37:25):
working class struggle, which gave the event a totally different
energy and atmosphere. And of course that energy and atmosphere
was in a huge part down to the attendees themselves,
often activists and organizers from across Italy and beyond.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Hi I'm Francisca.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
Hello, I'm Gabrielle.
Speaker 8 (37:44):
Hi I'm Bianca.
Speaker 7 (37:46):
We come from Turin in the northwestern Italy and we
represent Quomunette, which is a collective and must realistic association
which had a role in the gk and struggle in
the past four years. Many of our comrades helped in
(38:07):
many different ways, some of them with the industrial plan.
We also helped with the communication, doing graphic design and
helping with the media. We also helped with the legal
part of the struggle, especially in the first years.
Speaker 8 (38:29):
Two three years ago we slept inside the factory. We
passed a lot of time with collective, the fabrica and
with a lot of association, and so it's like the
memory of the place and the fact that we each
time we knew, we know new people and we meet
(38:51):
some people that we already met in the past.
Speaker 9 (38:56):
Turina we had a very great history of workers that
made the very great struggle. But this is something new
also because it's not a struggle for that struggle and stop,
but it's a struggle for a better future that for
(39:16):
that reason cannot stand only on to fit and has
to go with all the society. So all the parts
of the struggle, like the transfeminist movement, the ecological movement,
all the kind of work and struggle in society are
involved in the rendiustrialization in an ecological way, in a
(39:40):
new way that made the factory not an isolated the place,
but a place of work and of reproduction of life
that is connected to all the parts of society.
Speaker 10 (39:54):
I think it can all be summarizing two words. It's
building autonomy, okay, man I mean's David. I'm one of
the funder of the editorial project Chronicle Rebelli, which is
a project that was born on social media in twenty
sixteen to talk about history from a prospective and talk
about the history of come people and minorities and their
(40:17):
struggles the way, you know, the history of GPN has
been an history of as many others have been in Italy,
but i'd say in Europe and general is speaking, and
in North America as well, of the industrialization, and you know,
of basically taking down all the industrial what is called
(40:38):
you know, Western countries to relocate them and the way
it can be stopped from below because many many workers
made probably the mistake they're to say that of trusting
too much of the traditional parties and Indians and trying
to think that they would have, you know, solved the
creases from above. But actually Jkian, it's a clear example
(41:01):
and now constructing something you know that starts from below,
from the low level is actually the first step in
gaining unsustainable solution.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Hi, I'm Kuzma.
Speaker 11 (41:14):
I'm from Germany, from a South of Germany tied guide
and I'm here with some friends and especially in the
context of the campaign We Drive Together and German Defensisam.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
My name is Julia.
Speaker 12 (41:28):
I live in Leipsis and I'm a PhD student there
actually working on the GK and struggles in some years.
So I'm also here as part of the solidarity network
from Germany and as a scientist.
Speaker 11 (41:44):
I always wanted to come to see GIKEN and especially
because on the last years we as we said, we
did the campaign we Drive Together and germ DEFERANCISAM.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Which is a campaign between the Climate Justice.
Speaker 11 (41:58):
Movement and workers from the public transport and the union Verdi,
and doing that campaign and especially the bargain and campaign
the workers had the beginning last year we had a
first climate strike where it was also a warning.
Speaker 13 (42:15):
Strike of the workers.
Speaker 11 (42:18):
And during all that time, I think I was very
inspired by the struggle the workers are fighting year and
so it was always on my mind to one day
come here and to see it all.
Speaker 12 (42:33):
I mean, I tried to come here as often as possible.
But at the moment, I'm here because some months ago
they rode and passed or it was passed, this regional law.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
So they now hope that.
Speaker 12 (42:46):
The regional government will expropriate this building so that they
could start their cooperative not in any place, but in
their factory right here. And on the same time they
were fired again someday years ago. So it's a very
contradictory moment at the moment, and this is how you
always feel being part of the struggle, that it could
(43:08):
be the last moment to be here, to be part
of that struggle in that place, really in the factory.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
So this is why I thought, Okay.
Speaker 12 (43:17):
Before they could be really finally evicted, everyone should come
here to support and this is actually part of their
struggle and how they make history that whatever attack is arriving,
they kind of have a counteraction.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
And I see this literature festival as a part of it.
Speaker 12 (43:35):
To do something to mobilize people to yeah, make sure
that the police doesn't come to victim. And to me,
the introduction yesterday was already quite touching because Dadio, one
of the workers, he said something like, okay, it's important
that we tell our story and that we do this
(43:56):
literature festival because as working class people, we don't have
a lot of institutions or a lot of power resources,
at least when we.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Are not in a working factory anymore.
Speaker 12 (44:06):
So we cannot go on strike and stop production for example.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
So what we have is our.
Speaker 12 (44:11):
History and our stories, and this is how we can
shape society and how we can build our alliances. And
they are thought, okay that moment of like, as Marxists,
we like to talk about the structures, right, but they
really remind us the whole time that also our stories
and ideas they do shape class consciousness enormously. So and
(44:35):
this is why I really think how they talk about
their struggle and how also poetic it is. It's quite important.
One central question is how the climate movement and the
labor movement can fight together, and there are so many difficulties,
and here they show how even industrial workers, even in
this situation of dismissals can with all their dignity, be
(45:00):
part of also climate movements and shape climate politics and
their way and show that there would be a way out.
And they do not show it only ideologically, but they
really with that new law for example, they could really
be an example of how also in other regions of
the world this de industrialization could be answered in an
(45:21):
ecological way.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
That's really impressive.
Speaker 11 (45:24):
I think, yeah, I think it's just in general, it's
so important and inspiring in order to have this eutopia
here for us in Germany, for example, to know where
we have to go to, as you said, democraticize union structures,
to work on the climate, labor turn in a climate
(45:46):
movement as well as in unions, and to yes, just
have this example of how it could be. I think
it's very important also to have hope and to look
up to it.
Speaker 12 (46:00):
And then this really the cultural place where which really
feels like a.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Small real utopia.
Speaker 12 (46:07):
I think that everyone can go to an industrial sphere
where it's only a shopping mall and some trees left,
and otherwise that the factory. That you can come here
and see how people are jointly fighting, eating, discussing about politics.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
That's just something I've never.
Speaker 12 (46:26):
Seen like, it's really a social movement in an industrial
area which connects kind of new social movements and the
tradition of workers councils from the last one hundred years,
and you can really feel it that this is something
very special.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
These are just a few snapshots of some of the
conversations I managed to record while I was at the festival.
But one conversation I had, which in many ways summed
up everything from all the others that I've been having
over that weekend, was with a trade unionist from the
nearby city of Prato.
Speaker 14 (46:59):
I am I am a union organizer, and I'm organized
with this union called SUD COBUS SU double D COBBAS.
It means union, unity, democracy and dignity, and then cobus
means like base committees, because we are an autonomous union
(47:22):
and we think that the core of a union organization
should be the workers and the group of the workers
that organize inside the workplaces.
Speaker 13 (47:34):
We are here as volunteers.
Speaker 14 (47:36):
I have been translating the panels in English, and I've
been doing security.
Speaker 13 (47:44):
I did a shift at the bar.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Yeah, so various various jobs.
Speaker 14 (47:50):
We knew comrades from GKN even before the ninth of
July twenty twenty one. They were among the first to
always come to the strikes we were doing in the factories,
mostly in the textile district in the Prato area, which
is one of the biggest textile district in Europe, and
(48:12):
GKN workers were always among the first to come to
take their solidarities to cook meals for the workers who
were on strike, and so we during these years we've
developed these strong connections and we try to help the
struggle as much as possible because we feel the.
Speaker 13 (48:32):
Struggle as our own.
Speaker 14 (48:34):
Somehow, the majority of workers we organize with our migrant workers.
They come mostly from Pakistan, but also from other countries
because the majority of people who work here in the
area and have problems at work and work in exploitative conditions,
(48:55):
like a lot of people work.
Speaker 13 (48:57):
Twelve hours per day, seven days a week.
Speaker 14 (49:01):
And one of the most important things that we try
to do organizing together is to be a megaphone for
their voice and their experience and their desires to struggle
for a better life. And so I think that the
(49:23):
Working Class Literature Festival can really be a vector for
this because it's one of its goals is to tell
the working class, but also to let the working classes
speak and tell their own stories and talk about the
condition the working class experiences at work, but also what
(49:47):
kind of alternative people think it's necessary and want to
commit to build together. So yeah, that's why I think
this space is really something needed for the working class
to tell its own stories and to share its own perspective. Yes,
(50:10):
just now, it's a podcast so you can see what
we are seeing. But just looking in front of a
DKN factory. On the left, we have an hotel. Inside
this hotel, a group of female workers is organizing. They
do cleaning for the hotel rooms and they are basically
(50:33):
paid for the rooms they clean and not for the
hours they work. That's a big problem in the tourism
sector in this line of work.
Speaker 13 (50:44):
And on the right we have a.
Speaker 14 (50:47):
Warehouse of a furniture logistic company called the Mondo Convenianza.
Speaker 13 (50:52):
They also work.
Speaker 14 (50:55):
In a subcontract.
Speaker 13 (50:57):
Company in the Mondo Conveny and soa warehouse.
Speaker 14 (51:01):
And we were able to change this kind of condition
with five months of strike, sleeping in front of the
factory for five months. And yeah, but workers are still
organizing there. Yes, because new problems emerged. Even if we
won that struggle and people got a regular contract, but
(51:25):
we now are fighting for security at the workplace. And
in front of us there is a supermarket called the
Panorama and the workers are struggling there against the layoffs.
On the side of the Mundo convenience warehouse, there was
a sub supplier factory who worked for the brand mont Blanc.
(51:48):
Pakistani workers were working there doing mont Blanc bags twelve
hours a day, for six days a week for one
thousand euros per month. And when the union and they
conquered their rights and their right to an eight hour
five days time table, mont Blanc decided to take away
(52:11):
the work from this factory and so they found themselves
without a job basically, and so they're struggling since twenty
twenty three to be reinstated in the mom Blank supply chain.
Because made in Italy and fashional luxury is a sector
that we often think it's a good sector for people
(52:33):
to work in that because clothes or bags are so expensive,
then the working conditions must be good.
Speaker 13 (52:43):
But actually it's a sector.
Speaker 14 (52:45):
Where multinational companies and fashion brands try to extract the
maximum profit possible from the workers. So yes, the Working
Class Literature Festival is in front just for example of
all the situation, and we think that gkyn as an experience,
(53:06):
as a project of socially integrated public factory could really
be an important poll for the workers to meet, to
recognize theirselves, and to build a collective way to tell
their own stories.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
This for me, really sums up so many of the
things that made the Working Class Literature Festival so special.
Partly that blurring of boundaries between attendees, volunteers and speakers
that meant a union organizer might do security in the morning,
translate in the afternoon, give a talk in the evening,
and work the bar after dinner. But also the way
(53:43):
the festival was not just a platform for the GK
and workers, but also how it brought together the struggles
of so many others. This is what gave the factory
site the feeling of being a small utopia. As Julia
and Kusuma put it, the quality of the conversations you
had and the connections you made with people felt different
to those you have in normal, everyday life. You really
(54:04):
brought to mind a line from the novel Disneyland by
Scottish author De Ed Johnson, who he interviewed in Working
Class Literure Episodes five and six, where he writes, quote,
shared endeavor is the basis of meaningful conversation end quote.
What made these conversations, not to mention the singing and
marching and chanting, so meaningful was that they took place
(54:27):
in a setting where people weren't just talking about social transformation,
but one in which transformation was actually happening. Truth be told,
I'm almost embarrassed at how significant an experience it was
for me, because I feel like it makes me sound
like a born again religious fanatic. But it's like Hemingway
once wrote about Paris, if you're lucky to have lived
there as a young man, then wherever you go for
(54:49):
the rest of your life, it stays with you. For
Paris is a movable feast. Unfortunately for me, I'm no
longer a young man anymore. But regardless, my brief visit
to Pubsensio was an experience that absolutely will stay with
me for the rest of my life. As I'm recording this, however,
the struggle remains in a state of flux. As mentioned
(55:10):
right at the beginning of this episode, the workers were
made redundant for the third and final time, just before
the festival. There is now a fear that they could
be evicted at any point. At the same time, they're
waiting for the Industrial Consortium to become operational to allow
their socially integrated public factory to take shape. Yet the
Factory Collective and their supporters are not resting. Events continue
(55:33):
to be organized throughout July to celebrate the fourth anniversary
of their struggle. Plans continue to be drawn up for
the new factory, and financing continues to be broken in
order to make it a reality. The Working Class Literature
Festival and the struggle with the former GKN workers highlight
what literature and politics fundamentally have in common. That in
(55:54):
the end, both literature and politics are about producing stories
to understand both ourselves and the world, and they both
involved imagining new worlds. And ultimately, a group of workers
taken over their factory and fighting to transform it into
an ecosocialist co op against a background of rising far
right reaction sounds like the stuff of fantasy, of science fiction,
(56:16):
even mythology, and yet there it is in an industrial
suburb on the outskirts of Florence. While I was at
the festival, I shared a sleeping area with about five
other people. One of them was a retired firefighter and
veteran of numerous Italian social struggles who said something that
has since stayed with me. He said, when you're in
the desert, you need to know where the oases are
(56:37):
if you want to survive. But if you don't look
after your oases, even they will dry up. The GKN
struggle is one such oasis, and it's down to all
of us to help cultivate it and to cultivate new
oases if you want to survive the moment we're in.
Speaker 14 (56:53):
I think j kn's struggle is significant because from the
first moment they put their struggle at service of every struggle.
Somehow they started this struggle against the layoffs and the
closure of the factories, saying, yes, we are fighting for this,
(57:16):
but there is more to fight for, and we want
to put this struggle at service for the change of
the whole system of all the problems in the society
that we experience, but not only to struggle against all
these problems, but also try to build an alternative, and
(57:39):
in this sense, the project of the social integrated public factory.
I think it's a fundamental example of the necessity of
struggling against the problems we face, but also in the
meantime already beginning to build an alternative because we cannot
wait the final victory to start questioning ourselves about what
(58:04):
do we want?
Speaker 13 (58:05):
What do we need?
Speaker 14 (58:06):
But we should start from now to build the world
we want to live in.
Speaker 15 (58:12):
So different society, that's all we've got time for in
(58:39):
this episode.
Speaker 1 (58:40):
If you want to learn more about the Florence Working
Class Literature Festival and the GKN workers struggle, we recommend
you check out our Working Class Literature episodes ten and eleven.
You can also find out more info on the web
page for this episode link in the show notes. It's
only support from you, our listeners, which allows us to
make these podcasts, So if you appreciate our work, please
(59:01):
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 about this podcast
and give us a five star review on your favorite
(59:23):
podcast app. Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this
podcast possible, and a special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando
Lopez Ojeda, Nick Williams, and Old Norm. Our theme tune
for this episode is Okupiamola, as sung on a GK
and workers demonstration in twenty twenty four. Many thanks to
Real News for letting us use their recording and you
(59:43):
can find a link to the documentary it's taken from
on the web page for this episode. This episode was
edited by Jesse French. Anyway, that's it for today. Hope
you enjoyed the episode and thanks for listening.
Over the first weekend of April twenty twenty five, over
seven thousand people attended the third annual Working Class Literature Festival,
held at a former car Parks factory on the outskirts
of Florence. The opening day of the festival was the
one thousand, three hundred and sixty seventh day since the
workers first seized the plant in opposition to the company's
(00:21):
attempt to shut it down. In the days before the
festival was due to begin, workers received their third and
now final redundancy notice. Yet despite this news, the festival
remained both a buoyant and militant occasion as the workers
push ahead with their plans to reopen their factory as
a worker cooperative building ecological goods. This is working class Literature.
(01:09):
Before we start, 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 bonus content,
(01:30):
discounted books, merch and more. For instance, Patroon supporter has
got early access to this episode with our ads, and
they also get exclusive access to our two Patreon only
podcast series, Radical Reads and Fireside Chat link in the
show notes. You might remember that back in February, we
put out two episodes about the Working Class Literature Festival
(01:51):
in Florence. For the past three years, this festival has
taken place at the former GKN car parts factory that
in twenty twenty one was taken over by its former
employees after they were made redundant, and has been under
their control since. To get a fuller understanding of how
the festival got started and the GKN struggle itself, we
recommend you go back and listen to those episodes first.
(02:14):
But as part of making those episodes, the author and
festival organizer Alberto Brunetti, who we interviewed for those episodes,
suggested that I attend this year's event. I should note that,
unlike normal episodes, the interviews used here were recorded on
site at the festival itself, so apologies in advance for
the quality of some of the audio, which can vary
(02:35):
quite a bit. As such, in April, I made my
way out to Florence to experience it for myself, a
weekend of music, talks, discussions, and performances, not to mention
food and beer that brought together over seven thousand people,
making it easily the biggest working class cultural event in
Europe and perhaps even the world. But more important than
(02:55):
the scale of the event was the way that it
was different from pretty much any other literary event that
I'd been to, even though specifically about working class writing.
As we touched on in the previous episodes, this festival
is not just about increasing working class representation in middle
class dominated areas of society, like publishing in academia. It's
about transforming society itself, something that was evident in the
(03:18):
slogan of this year's festival, We will be Everything. The
result of this is that while there were professional writers
and scholars who are from working class backgrounds or writing
about working class issues, there are also many talks by
people who write and research but might not think of
themselves primarily as writers or researchers.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
My book is about it's some kind of chronicles, it's
some kind of a memoir. It's my first year in
Sweden and they so if you want to know my background,
I'm at high school dropout. I come from Poland.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
This is Daria Bogdanska, a union activist living in Malmo,
southern Sweden, and the author illustrator of the graphic novel
Wage Slaves.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I don't come from.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
A union tradition, you know. I'm now thirty something. When
I grew up, I was kind of maybe considering myself
a leftist, but I have no idea of actual union work.
You know, I was a part of the precarreat and
in this way you read about union traditions, you read
about left wing history, but it's very apps right.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
It's the past.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You don't see, at least me being the like young
millennial leftist. I couldn't relate to this in my daily life.
Just working shit jobs and a way of changing your
conditions would be changing a job instead of taking a fight.
Your European Union opens to Poland, where I go, of
(04:46):
course London, where I did the bike messager work for
a few years.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I consider it a shit job. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I did some bike mechanic jobs, I did some waiting,
I did any any kind of shit job you can
imagine in Spain, in the UK. And I'm kind of
a typical European EU nomad, going and doing different ship
jobs and just finding means to to live, and then
(05:15):
I end up in Sweden. That's actually a fun story
because there is those schools people schools FORCA schooler. It's
some kind of vocational schools for people who didn't finish
high school. So if you don't have a high school diploma,
you can apply for such a school. And I got
information that you could maybe apply to this kind of school.
(05:38):
I always did writing and drawing, so I applied to
comics school. Actually I just want to try something, and
iled that I knew Swedish and my application and I
got in and I was okay, then I'm going to Sweden.
Basically me in my backpack and I've, you know, a
few hundred euros in my pocket. The whole book kind
(06:00):
of depict my first year in Sweden and kind of
my classes with the Swedish system, the clashes of my
imagination of Swedish system as a kind of orderly, bureaucratic
welfare paradise where everybody is equal and you know, the
land of social democracy where maybe shitty jobs would be
(06:22):
less shitty, and what I found out during this first
year that I work in a restaurant there. I work illegally,
even though I'm from EU and I have right to
work in Sweden. I found in some kafkan situation where
you have to apply for this personal number in Sweden,
(06:42):
like social security number in order to have a like
legal job. But in order to get this number, you
have to have a job. So it's a catch twenty
two situation, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
So I work illegally.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I work at a restaurant. It's an Indian restaurant, and
I'm the only white person working there, and I earn
like five years an hour and this is shitty, but
I'm used to shitty, you know. I just need to
pay my rent and I go to work before and
after school. But what I realized is that there's people.
(07:14):
There's a whole karaokee of workers there. And I earn
five euro, which for a Swede is slave wage. But
there is people from Bangladesh who work earn four and
a half a euro. But there is a guy from
Pakistan who earns three euro. And there's you know, well,
I call it a letter of desperation that you know,
(07:36):
more desperate you are for a job for money than
then the last like the last he get paid, and
this is something that pisces me off really and this
is something to push me to try to organize, which
I do formally for the first time in my life.
So this is a story of me going through this
(07:56):
journey kind of awakening in that sense into trying to organize,
trying to organize the kind of precarious situations, try to
also navigate how to organize when there's so much at stakes,
like people who have working visas and risk a lot,
(08:17):
or like some shady connections with the owner who lends
them money or they live at his place, or they
live at the restaurant, you know, and how to organize
in those conditions. That So this is a parallel story
of the union organizing and also me finding my way
in Sweden, finding my life in Sweden, kind of observing,
trying to understand what's going on around me, what's this
(08:39):
country about.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
After this period in her life, Darry began organizing among
market workers with a number of different unions, something that
she continues to do to this day. But one thing
she mentioned was how her writing and her activism are
often in tension with each other when it comes to
competing for her time.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
After I wrote a book.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I mean, there was a lot of interest in the
book because they don't have an immigrant woman talking about,
you know, our own conditions, you know, which I understand
the interest because I prefer to speak about myself. We
migrants speak with our own voices. Then somebody else tells
you about how we have it. So there was a
(09:19):
lot of interest. But I noticed also one thing that
I would be like invited by the major unions to
talk about both the culture sector, and then the unions
would would invite me and I would talk about my
situation in my book, but they like to hear how
terrible it was. But as soon as I came with
(09:39):
some criticism or solutions, as soon as I was showing
some agency, they were not interested anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And after some years.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Of doing this kind of being being like a I
don't know, a spokesperson for migrant in like culture sphere,
like you know, by being a writer, I just got
tired of it and I realize, like shit, I just
want to do organizing. I want to help also other
people who are in a situation like me. So I
started getting more involved with the union. I struggle with
(10:08):
this because sometimes you know, we have this kind of
idea of a successful person who's like both and the
activist and the brilliant thinker and also fantastic organizer and
writer and everything. And I'm like, you know, I'm not
so smart, I'm not so fantastic. Like maybe I cannot
manage to do be everything at once, and right now,
(10:32):
I mean I would manage to do both, and right
now I just out of way. I'm more of a
practitioner right now than talker. But I still think it's
valuable to talk about those things, and I'm really happy
that I did, but I just kind of got impatient,
but just talking.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Daria was just one of the many excellent speakers that
I met over the fest of a weekend. But another
that I had a chance to speak to was Luca Leijang,
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Macau in China, an
editor of the anthology Asian Workers' Stories. In many ways,
Luca's research picks up where Dari's graphic novel left off
in terms of giving a voice to migrant workers, though
(11:12):
in Lucas case, her focus is on those who are
further down what Daria calls the ladder of desperation.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
I wrote my PhD on working class literature in China
and Singapore as a comparative study. One important part of
my research focuses on micro worker writings in Singapore and China.
So in Singapore, just put it briefly, there are a
(11:39):
lot of migro workers come from less developed countries such
as the Philippines, Burma, Bangladesh, and they work there in
those three D jobs such as domestic helpers and construction workers.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Three D jobs here refers to the three d's used
to describe the work done by market workers that is dirty, dangerous,
and demeaning.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
So that's all basically the magrant workers do in Singapore,
but Singapore is not the unique case. They are also
in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan
and China too. In China, I mean slightly different, they're
not transnational workers, but the nature of the work is
(12:30):
the same. So along with my research, I have met
a lot of worker writers who are writing a lot
of things about their life, their job. And I have
also read a lot of older working class literatures from
this region, for instance, those who are actively writing in
(12:52):
the nineteen seventies, and I found it is very different
that how those older group of workers write their life
and work as a working class writers and the contemporary
domestic workers. So after I did my PhD, I was like, Okay,
I really wanted to collect those worker writers to put
(13:16):
them together in one book. I really want to highlight
this kind of collective way of framing workers writing, not
only as individual workers. For instance, a lot of magan
worker writers in Singapore has been framed as migrant writers,
(13:40):
and I have a trouble with that term because in general,
when they talk about magnant writers, it seems worker identity
has been raised or downplayed. So there are a lot
of literal events and activities about megan worker writings in
this region, for instance Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but
(14:04):
I'm always worried about how they downplay the worker aspect
in these writings. And there are a lot of things
also happened within this writing community. For instance, when migrant
workers are writing about their home lives, their personal emotions,
(14:25):
they are very welcomed by the local government's literary events.
But there's a line where when they started writing about
their working conditions as workers, or when they want want
to have some improvements in their life conditions, they are
no longer walcomed in this kind of writing practices. So
(14:50):
I wanted to do a book where I didn't encourage
them to write about their working conditions, but I really
want to put this working class literature class perspective in
this book, and certainly maybe the last one is I
want to kind of I want to the writers know
they are not writing alone. They are workers in different
(15:15):
parts of Asia writing about the writing. So I want
to kind of bring this book to them and let
them know, see, you're not working alone. We have a
lot of people writing on their lives. They are writers
in these collections who are very experienced writers, they have
been writing for years. But the fact is some of
(15:37):
the writers are very experienced ones and they are published
that they are recognized, but some of them are very
very new. And there is also a relatively older worker
writer from Malaysia in this collection, so I found he's
very interesting because he was connected with the older working
(15:57):
class writing in Malaysia in the nineteen seventies. So in
Malaysia in nineteen seventies, Malaysia and Singapore in the nineteen
sixties and seventies, there was a very active working class
writing group who basically of the factory workers or bus
drivers or plantation workers, because there was a very active
(16:21):
working class culture at that time, but now they are
kind of forgotten or marginalized because they're not a lot
of working class literature studies or institutions in that region.
So I read his books. He self published to a
collection of his writings in Chinese, and I read it
(16:43):
and I kind of approached to I asked him, do
you want is that okay if I translate one or
two of your stories to this collection, and he said,
of course. So that's again one of my kind of
hope that I can historic size those writings. And because
(17:06):
those writings are not you know, like speaking of from
working class writing perspective, it's not something that new.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
One of the interesting things about Asian workers' stories is
the range of different jobs and nationalities of its contributors
and how these interact with various literary traditions that inform
their writing.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
There are a lot of domestic workers. They live in
the households, and it is exactly very hard to draw
the line between life and work in a sense where
they work at where the employers live, and they live
there right, so you can see a lot. Their stories
(17:48):
are very kind of centered this household. So it's also
kind of no longer the traditional working class life where
you go to a factory or you go to a
place to work. Maybe Stephanie's story is a very good
(18:09):
example where Stephanie's story the Autobiography of the Other Lady
Gaga is particularly interesting in terms of the form or
the round word she uses. Her stories in this collection
is drawn from this form called dectly in the Filipino
(18:30):
literary tradition, where I think it's similar to flesh fiction
or mini stories or mini fiction in English terms, and
those writings. This genre started at the beginning of twentieth
century in the Philippines after the Philippines in the US War,
(18:52):
and people wrote in this form they published on local
magazines newspapers in their vernacular languages. So she also used
this form for her writings, which I find very interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
The Autobiography of the Other Lady Gaga is a contribution
to Asian workers' stories by Stephanie j Alfarez, a trans Philippine,
a migrant worker who works for almost fifteen years in
Saudi Arabia. As Luca mentioned, the dagli form that she
uses in her story has its roots in the anti
American newspapers and magazines that proliferated after the Philippine American
(19:31):
War at the turn of the twentieth century, But as
the translator's note in the anthology makes clear, the dagli
is also a former vignette or sketch for expressing romantic
love for a woman. This context feels very present in
Alpharez's story, not just in terms of the political origins
of the dagli, but also its roots as a romantic genre.
(19:52):
But those romantic roots contrast starkly with the multiple depictions
of sexual harassment and violence in Alvarez's story and in
dou and So Alvarez powerfully twist those routes into a
sick parody of themselves. Like Lucas says, for domestic workers,
the line between life and work is often hard to draw,
and as can be read in Alvarez's story, the same
(20:14):
can be said about the line between workers issues or
the issues of migrants, women, or LGBT plus communities, particularly
in places like Saudi Arabia, where their vulnerability as oppressed
groups is made worse by the conditions of their employment. However,
Alvarez is not the only writer in the collection to
use form and genre in interesting ways.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Speaking of form, I'm very interested in, for instance, the
form of journal or how they document their factory life
or construction workers life. So I mean those other forms
for other boushease writings or middle class writings, but they
I find those kind of writing from those worker writers
(20:58):
gave a new meaning to those roundwolks. For instance, diary
caeping might be a very kind of I mean, most
of the times we read a diary from writers write
famous writers Virginia vol for others, but they also for instance,
the writer in this book, the last one, M. D.
(21:20):
Shari Fooding. He's from Bangladesh and he used to work
as a migrant worker in Singapore in constructions, and he
published actually two books on his life in Singapore, and
those two books are named as Diary of a Migrant
Worker in Singapore. And again, in terms of form, maybe
(21:43):
keeping a journal or diary was supposed to be very
intimate personal writing, but his writing was meant to be
read by others, others in terms of Singaporean people and
other fellow workers for other different purpose.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Last year on the working Class Literature podcast. We published
a three part series on migrant worker poetry in China,
with a significant focus on the poetry anthology Iron Moon.
One thing that came up during my conversation with Luca, however,
is that those Chinese mirgant worker poets who have been
translated into English themselves often reflect the biases of Western
(22:21):
scholars and translators. If you'd like to listen to our
series and Chinese market worker Poetry, we'll include a link
to it on the web page for this episode link
in the show notes.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
So in China, everything's very complicated, even when it comes
to workers' writing. There are so many workers are writing
in China today or in the past, and I find
this is very interesting in terms of who God translated.
Irol Moon did a great job in terms of how
(22:55):
collectively poets are translated, but there is also a trend
that they are certain type. I would say worker poets
got translated into English, and it's really sometimes I even
feel it depends on who was discussed or written by
(23:19):
Western academics. And maybe this point is controversial, but what
I wrote in my PhD is that there is a
group of underground worker writers or poets. I mean, they're
not like popular in China, but their work are not
(23:43):
talked about by overseas readers or even scholars. So the
first one I found it's extremely important and interesting that
they have a very radical class consciousness. And they secondly,
they write and they want to publish, and they organize
(24:06):
this collective because they want to build up a working
class culture. And that's also paradoxically the reason they stay
largely unknown by most of the people, because they don't
want to get to know by the mainstream media or
mainstream middle class publishing houses. Because in their publication, they
(24:32):
have published three collections of their own works and they
wrote very clearly that so our aim of those writing
and these publications is to build up a working class culture,
and it is from the working class, the workers, the
(24:54):
Chinese workers, and it is for the working class. So
I've found that is extremely interesting and very important if
we want to talk about working class literature, because from
my perspective, a lot of worker writers are consumed today
by the middle class taste and middle class or mainstream
(25:18):
publishing industry, and those writers are very radical also in
terms of why do they write. They see a political
potential there in their writing. They want to change, right,
They want to kind of call for a more collective
(25:39):
way of writing and building up a culture of their own,
and certainly they want kind of working class solidarity from below.
So even in the very beginning, when I approached to
the poet out and writer, he's very kind of suspicious
(26:01):
of me, which is okay. He was like, okay, who
are you?
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Like?
Speaker 4 (26:05):
You can feel he has a sense like I don't
want to be studied, right, So I spent years or
sometimes talk to him and explain my views and build
up these kind of connections with him and as well
as other few writers from this collection. I found that
(26:26):
that's really really important, even in China or in Asia today,
that you know how the worker writers are approached and
how we collaborate with them as academics or translators or
published industries. A lot of worker writers, as far as
I know, are consumed. And I also I wrote about
(26:47):
this in Singapore, like how a worker writer are made
and am made by middle class writers or that industry
in general.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
There's about to be a quick ad break here. If
you'd like to listen to our episodes without ads, then
do support us on Patreon for ad free episodes, as
well as a bunch of other Patreon only content at
patreon dot com slash Working Class History. Luca and Daria
were just two of the incredible speakers at the festival
this year, but there were numerous others in both English
(27:20):
and Italian, and always supported by a seemingly endless network
of volunteer interpreters. More than any one particular talk or performance, however,
what really made the festival so unique was its connection
to the ongoing struggle at GKN, which, as we've mentioned before,
goes beyond the everyday struggle of work and wages towards
(27:40):
something more fundamentally transformative. Over the years that this struggle
has been going on for workers have put together an
industrial plan to reopen the factory as a worker's cooperative,
but not making car parts as they were before. In
the new industrial plan, the GKN workers intend to restart
production making ecological goods like a range of cargo bikes
(28:01):
for fossil fuel free delivery services and solar panels, both
to sell as a product in and of itself and
also for the factory to produce cheap, renewable energy for
the local community. This is all part of the Factory
Collective's plan for what they call a socially integrated public factory,
a factory that will be at least fifty one percent
(28:22):
owned by the workers themselves and responding to the needs
of the local area. To help bring this about, the
GQN Factory Collective proposed a law on public industrial Consortiums,
which will allow public bodies to buy up industrial sites
once companies shut down production. In December twenty twenty four,
this law was approved by the regional government in Tuscany.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
Now, the next step we are struggling for the city
halls and the regional government to airy up in the
process of creating this public consortium that is the one
that they can create in Othersinga, is the season on
our law, in order that maybe in June July they
(29:04):
can start to prepare game with the ownership in order
that this building becomes a.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Public This is Daria Salvetti, the spokesperson for the GKN
Factory Collective, speaking to a group of international attendees this
year's Working Class Literature Festival. Longer term listeners might remember
that we also spoke to Dario in our previous episodes
on the festival. And the struggle at GKN.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
The right wing parties in Toscany are attacking us. They
say that our law of public consul is a law
that brings you back to the.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
Soviets in Toscany.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
I would like to, but it's not the case. It's
a very very moderate law that is simply allows a
public government to say, if there is a factory, you
have to be like that is a factory. You cannot
treat a factory like a real estate investment. This is
the basic purpose of the law, not less, not both.
(30:01):
And we have a fear that the Democratic Party want
to invest in this law because they want to use
it into the electoral field. But we won't succeed because
their will is not what they sometimes do. Because a
party that has been formed in us and ars in
privatizing everything now that they have to a public.
Speaker 6 (30:24):
Feing to those so fail. So there could be also.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
The shot very want to let us win, but they're
not able because they don't have the real mind to
be created something public, so that there would be the
worst scenario that is that in September, when September October,
when the election comes, the right wing attacked us because
we have Richard, no nothing. They attack the Democratic Party
(30:51):
because of Foreman has formed the public consortion that is
not functionate, and that could be the word sinnaty.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
The Democratic Party that Darius were into here is not
the one from the United States, but the main center
left party in Italy, but one which, like many center
left parties across the West, has been firmly near liberal
now for decades. And as Dario explains why the law
itself will open up space for workers to finally take
control of their factory, it cannot simply be left up
(31:20):
to a political party that for years has been dedicated
to privatization. Rather, the plan will have to be fought
for by the GKN workers and their supporters, and as
a result, the plan also includes space for other groups
to be included.
Speaker 5 (31:35):
That moment proposal will be that it's not part will
remain such a part of the factory, so that these
activities will become a regularly and that will be founded
a permanent office of the working class culture, not only literature,
but everything and the other part of the factory, in
(31:55):
the first part producing solar planets, there will be a
part that won't be used by us because our industrial
plan media nine thousand square meters. This is eighty thousand
square meters of the area and thirty five square meters
the fund.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
This permanent office for working class culture that Dadiol mentioned
is part of a plan to start a working class
cultural hub on the site of the former GKN factory.
This cultural hub would include a museum, social and labor
movement archives beginning with that of the Tuscan Metal Workers Union,
are permanent headquarters for the organization of European working class
(32:36):
literature festivals, and an audio visual center including training for
aspiring filmmakers. This is just one of the projects that
will be developed on the site, which will be run
by a cooperative made up not only of the former workers,
but climber and migrants rights campaigners, mutual aid associations and
social centers. The plan is incredible, almost too good to
(32:58):
be true, But as with all the other obstacles that
have gone in their way, the factory collective has a
strategy for overcoming it and turning their plans into reality.
Speaker 6 (33:08):
For or less, we need twelve million euros okay, six
hundred thousand can come from our unemployment benefit, because we
can shift our employment benefit in.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
The properatives we have some ethic financial fund that would
make two millions in loop and ethic bank that make
to two million euros. And then we have another public
sector that would bring into the project like half million.
And then we have like five million that should come
(33:41):
from the bank. Okay, and we are burgaining with some bank.
And as I was saying, they're not yeah because they
are clever or because they won't that our struggle win,
but because this druggle is so popular that it's an
occasion also for the bank to the social wash. We
know this is the game. But it's impossible to start
a factory without alone.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
From a bag.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Unsurprisingly, the plan hasn't been well received by the business community.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
What it's been clear in the last months is that
very is total skeaticism from the industrial sector in Italy
little least, but I think it's something that is zero.
There is total scadism in the chance to produce solar
panels here. The want to leave the technology to China.
And you could say, well, it's better if someone will
do solar panel. I don't mind if we are China
(34:27):
and Italy. Yes and no, it would be better to
produce solar panel with a short chain of value because
of course more kilometers the solar panel do and later
will be the recovery of the energy that the solar
panel produces.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
We had to change a lot of things in the
industry plant.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
For example, we don't want to produce classical solar panel
like the Chinese one or what is We can also
produce those one, but the kind of solar panels that
we want to produce will be solar panel that are
contr customers. I said, in order to be involved in
the existing buildings and not to waste other square meters
(35:09):
of a free ground, for example in the countries. So
everything was difficult, but going quite okay from a day
to another. We started to feel that every private investor
was trying to find an excuse to wit the project.
And the real reason is that then those aspects of
banks are saying it's possible in solar panel in and
(35:33):
they say Mario Draghi, that is the former Prime Minister
of Italy in a recent interviews, say you know, we
have lost the technology, leave solar palet to the Chinese
and we went to our other fie. So it's not
a question that we want to steal solar panelts to Chinese.
We don't want to steal to anybody. We want to cooperate,
(35:54):
not to compete.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
This context of struggle of work has taken over a
fanct and reimagining what they could do with it filled
the Literature Festival with so much energy, and as in
previous years, one of the ways that this energy manifested
itself was in a demonstration of thousands of attendees through
the streets on the outskirts of Florence, singing as always
(36:17):
the GKN workers anthem occupiamola, which in English translates to
let's occupy it. Not that final chant siamo tuti g
(37:04):
capa translates as we are all GKN. This was something
more than a simple literary festival. Of course, It was
also that, with the kinds of interesting speakers and discussions
that you would expect at such an event anywhere in
the world. But it was also something else as well.
It was working class literature as an active part of
(37:25):
working class struggle, which gave the event a totally different
energy and atmosphere. And of course that energy and atmosphere
was in a huge part down to the attendees themselves,
often activists and organizers from across Italy and beyond.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Hi I'm Francisca.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
Hello, I'm Gabrielle.
Speaker 8 (37:44):
Hi I'm Bianca.
Speaker 7 (37:46):
We come from Turin in the northwestern Italy and we
represent Quomunette, which is a collective and must realistic association
which had a role in the gk and struggle in
the past four years. Many of our comrades helped in
(38:07):
many different ways, some of them with the industrial plan.
We also helped with the communication, doing graphic design and
helping with the media. We also helped with the legal
part of the struggle, especially in the first years.
Speaker 8 (38:29):
Two three years ago we slept inside the factory. We
passed a lot of time with collective, the fabrica and
with a lot of association, and so it's like the
memory of the place and the fact that we each
time we knew, we know new people and we meet
(38:51):
some people that we already met in the past.
Speaker 9 (38:56):
Turina we had a very great history of workers that
made the very great struggle. But this is something new
also because it's not a struggle for that struggle and stop,
but it's a struggle for a better future that for
(39:16):
that reason cannot stand only on to fit and has
to go with all the society. So all the parts
of the struggle, like the transfeminist movement, the ecological movement,
all the kind of work and struggle in society are
involved in the rendiustrialization in an ecological way, in a
(39:40):
new way that made the factory not an isolated the place,
but a place of work and of reproduction of life
that is connected to all the parts of society.
Speaker 10 (39:54):
I think it can all be summarizing two words. It's
building autonomy, okay, man I mean's David. I'm one of
the funder of the editorial project Chronicle Rebelli, which is
a project that was born on social media in twenty
sixteen to talk about history from a prospective and talk
about the history of come people and minorities and their
(40:17):
struggles the way, you know, the history of GPN has
been an history of as many others have been in Italy,
but i'd say in Europe and general is speaking, and
in North America as well, of the industrialization, and you know,
of basically taking down all the industrial what is called
(40:38):
you know, Western countries to relocate them and the way
it can be stopped from below because many many workers
made probably the mistake they're to say that of trusting
too much of the traditional parties and Indians and trying
to think that they would have, you know, solved the
creases from above. But actually Jkian, it's a clear example
(41:01):
and now constructing something you know that starts from below,
from the low level is actually the first step in
gaining unsustainable solution.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Hi, I'm Kuzma.
Speaker 11 (41:14):
I'm from Germany, from a South of Germany tied guide
and I'm here with some friends and especially in the
context of the campaign We Drive Together and German Defensisam.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
My name is Julia.
Speaker 12 (41:28):
I live in Leipsis and I'm a PhD student there
actually working on the GK and struggles in some years.
So I'm also here as part of the solidarity network
from Germany and as a scientist.
Speaker 11 (41:44):
I always wanted to come to see GIKEN and especially
because on the last years we as we said, we
did the campaign we Drive Together and germ DEFERANCISAM.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Which is a campaign between the Climate Justice.
Speaker 11 (41:58):
Movement and workers from the public transport and the union Verdi,
and doing that campaign and especially the bargain and campaign
the workers had the beginning last year we had a
first climate strike where it was also a warning.
Speaker 13 (42:15):
Strike of the workers.
Speaker 11 (42:18):
And during all that time, I think I was very
inspired by the struggle the workers are fighting year and
so it was always on my mind to one day
come here and to see it all.
Speaker 12 (42:33):
I mean, I tried to come here as often as possible.
But at the moment, I'm here because some months ago
they rode and passed or it was passed, this regional law.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
So they now hope that.
Speaker 12 (42:46):
The regional government will expropriate this building so that they
could start their cooperative not in any place, but in
their factory right here. And on the same time they
were fired again someday years ago. So it's a very
contradictory moment at the moment, and this is how you
always feel being part of the struggle, that it could
(43:08):
be the last moment to be here, to be part
of that struggle in that place, really in the factory.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
So this is why I thought, Okay.
Speaker 12 (43:17):
Before they could be really finally evicted, everyone should come
here to support and this is actually part of their
struggle and how they make history that whatever attack is arriving,
they kind of have a counteraction.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
And I see this literature festival as a part of it.
Speaker 12 (43:35):
To do something to mobilize people to yeah, make sure
that the police doesn't come to victim. And to me,
the introduction yesterday was already quite touching because Dadio, one
of the workers, he said something like, okay, it's important
that we tell our story and that we do this
(43:56):
literature festival because as working class people, we don't have
a lot of institutions or a lot of power resources,
at least when we.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Are not in a working factory anymore.
Speaker 12 (44:06):
So we cannot go on strike and stop production for example.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
So what we have is our.
Speaker 12 (44:11):
History and our stories, and this is how we can
shape society and how we can build our alliances. And
they are thought, okay that moment of like, as Marxists,
we like to talk about the structures, right, but they
really remind us the whole time that also our stories
and ideas they do shape class consciousness enormously. So and
(44:35):
this is why I really think how they talk about
their struggle and how also poetic it is. It's quite important.
One central question is how the climate movement and the
labor movement can fight together, and there are so many difficulties,
and here they show how even industrial workers, even in
this situation of dismissals can with all their dignity, be
(45:00):
part of also climate movements and shape climate politics and
their way and show that there would be a way out.
And they do not show it only ideologically, but they
really with that new law for example, they could really
be an example of how also in other regions of
the world this de industrialization could be answered in an
(45:21):
ecological way.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
That's really impressive.
Speaker 11 (45:24):
I think, yeah, I think it's just in general, it's
so important and inspiring in order to have this eutopia
here for us in Germany, for example, to know where
we have to go to, as you said, democraticize union structures,
to work on the climate, labor turn in a climate
(45:46):
movement as well as in unions, and to yes, just
have this example of how it could be. I think
it's very important also to have hope and to look
up to it.
Speaker 12 (46:00):
And then this really the cultural place where which really
feels like a.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Small real utopia.
Speaker 12 (46:07):
I think that everyone can go to an industrial sphere
where it's only a shopping mall and some trees left,
and otherwise that the factory. That you can come here
and see how people are jointly fighting, eating, discussing about politics.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
That's just something I've never.
Speaker 12 (46:26):
Seen like, it's really a social movement in an industrial
area which connects kind of new social movements and the
tradition of workers councils from the last one hundred years,
and you can really feel it that this is something
very special.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
These are just a few snapshots of some of the
conversations I managed to record while I was at the festival.
But one conversation I had, which in many ways summed
up everything from all the others that I've been having
over that weekend, was with a trade unionist from the
nearby city of Prato.
Speaker 14 (46:59):
I am I am a union organizer, and I'm organized
with this union called SUD COBUS SU double D COBBAS.
It means union, unity, democracy and dignity, and then cobus
means like base committees, because we are an autonomous union
(47:22):
and we think that the core of a union organization
should be the workers and the group of the workers
that organize inside the workplaces.
Speaker 13 (47:34):
We are here as volunteers.
Speaker 14 (47:36):
I have been translating the panels in English, and I've
been doing security.
Speaker 13 (47:44):
I did a shift at the bar.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Yeah, so various various jobs.
Speaker 14 (47:50):
We knew comrades from GKN even before the ninth of
July twenty twenty one. They were among the first to
always come to the strikes we were doing in the factories,
mostly in the textile district in the Prato area, which
is one of the biggest textile district in Europe, and
(48:12):
GKN workers were always among the first to come to
take their solidarities to cook meals for the workers who
were on strike, and so we during these years we've
developed these strong connections and we try to help the
struggle as much as possible because we feel the.
Speaker 13 (48:32):
Struggle as our own.
Speaker 14 (48:34):
Somehow, the majority of workers we organize with our migrant workers.
They come mostly from Pakistan, but also from other countries
because the majority of people who work here in the
area and have problems at work and work in exploitative conditions,
(48:55):
like a lot of people work.
Speaker 13 (48:57):
Twelve hours per day, seven days a week.
Speaker 14 (49:01):
And one of the most important things that we try
to do organizing together is to be a megaphone for
their voice and their experience and their desires to struggle
for a better life. And so I think that the
(49:23):
Working Class Literature Festival can really be a vector for
this because it's one of its goals is to tell
the working class, but also to let the working classes
speak and tell their own stories and talk about the
condition the working class experiences at work, but also what
(49:47):
kind of alternative people think it's necessary and want to
commit to build together. So yeah, that's why I think
this space is really something needed for the working class
to tell its own stories and to share its own perspective. Yes,
(50:10):
just now, it's a podcast so you can see what
we are seeing. But just looking in front of a
DKN factory. On the left, we have an hotel. Inside
this hotel, a group of female workers is organizing. They
do cleaning for the hotel rooms and they are basically
(50:33):
paid for the rooms they clean and not for the
hours they work. That's a big problem in the tourism
sector in this line of work.
Speaker 13 (50:44):
And on the right we have a.
Speaker 14 (50:47):
Warehouse of a furniture logistic company called the Mondo Convenianza.
Speaker 13 (50:52):
They also work.
Speaker 14 (50:55):
In a subcontract.
Speaker 13 (50:57):
Company in the Mondo Conveny and soa warehouse.
Speaker 14 (51:01):
And we were able to change this kind of condition
with five months of strike, sleeping in front of the
factory for five months. And yeah, but workers are still
organizing there. Yes, because new problems emerged. Even if we
won that struggle and people got a regular contract, but
(51:25):
we now are fighting for security at the workplace. And
in front of us there is a supermarket called the
Panorama and the workers are struggling there against the layoffs.
On the side of the Mundo convenience warehouse, there was
a sub supplier factory who worked for the brand mont Blanc.
(51:48):
Pakistani workers were working there doing mont Blanc bags twelve
hours a day, for six days a week for one
thousand euros per month. And when the union and they
conquered their rights and their right to an eight hour
five days time table, mont Blanc decided to take away
(52:11):
the work from this factory and so they found themselves
without a job basically, and so they're struggling since twenty
twenty three to be reinstated in the mom Blank supply chain.
Because made in Italy and fashional luxury is a sector
that we often think it's a good sector for people
(52:33):
to work in that because clothes or bags are so expensive,
then the working conditions must be good.
Speaker 13 (52:43):
But actually it's a sector.
Speaker 14 (52:45):
Where multinational companies and fashion brands try to extract the
maximum profit possible from the workers. So yes, the Working
Class Literature Festival is in front just for example of
all the situation, and we think that gkyn as an experience,
(53:06):
as a project of socially integrated public factory could really
be an important poll for the workers to meet, to
recognize theirselves, and to build a collective way to tell
their own stories.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
This for me, really sums up so many of the
things that made the Working Class Literature Festival so special.
Partly that blurring of boundaries between attendees, volunteers and speakers
that meant a union organizer might do security in the morning,
translate in the afternoon, give a talk in the evening,
and work the bar after dinner. But also the way
(53:43):
the festival was not just a platform for the GK
and workers, but also how it brought together the struggles
of so many others. This is what gave the factory
site the feeling of being a small utopia. As Julia
and Kusuma put it, the quality of the conversations you
had and the connections you made with people felt different
to those you have in normal, everyday life. You really
(54:04):
brought to mind a line from the novel Disneyland by
Scottish author De Ed Johnson, who he interviewed in Working
Class Literure Episodes five and six, where he writes, quote,
shared endeavor is the basis of meaningful conversation end quote.
What made these conversations, not to mention the singing and
marching and chanting, so meaningful was that they took place
(54:27):
in a setting where people weren't just talking about social transformation,
but one in which transformation was actually happening. Truth be told,
I'm almost embarrassed at how significant an experience it was
for me, because I feel like it makes me sound
like a born again religious fanatic. But it's like Hemingway
once wrote about Paris, if you're lucky to have lived
there as a young man, then wherever you go for
(54:49):
the rest of your life, it stays with you. For
Paris is a movable feast. Unfortunately for me, I'm no
longer a young man anymore. But regardless, my brief visit
to Pubsensio was an experience that absolutely will stay with
me for the rest of my life. As I'm recording this, however,
the struggle remains in a state of flux. As mentioned
(55:10):
right at the beginning of this episode, the workers were
made redundant for the third and final time, just before
the festival. There is now a fear that they could
be evicted at any point. At the same time, they're
waiting for the Industrial Consortium to become operational to allow
their socially integrated public factory to take shape. Yet the
Factory Collective and their supporters are not resting. Events continue
(55:33):
to be organized throughout July to celebrate the fourth anniversary
of their struggle. Plans continue to be drawn up for
the new factory, and financing continues to be broken in
order to make it a reality. The Working Class Literature
Festival and the struggle with the former GKN workers highlight
what literature and politics fundamentally have in common. That in
(55:54):
the end, both literature and politics are about producing stories
to understand both ourselves and the world, and they both
involved imagining new worlds. And ultimately, a group of workers
taken over their factory and fighting to transform it into
an ecosocialist co op against a background of rising far
right reaction sounds like the stuff of fantasy, of science fiction,
(56:16):
even mythology, and yet there it is in an industrial
suburb on the outskirts of Florence. While I was at
the festival, I shared a sleeping area with about five
other people. One of them was a retired firefighter and
veteran of numerous Italian social struggles who said something that
has since stayed with me. He said, when you're in
the desert, you need to know where the oases are
(56:37):
if you want to survive. But if you don't look
after your oases, even they will dry up. The GKN
struggle is one such oasis, and it's down to all
of us to help cultivate it and to cultivate new
oases if you want to survive the moment we're in.
Speaker 14 (56:53):
I think j kn's struggle is significant because from the
first moment they put their struggle at service of every struggle.
Somehow they started this struggle against the layoffs and the
closure of the factories, saying, yes, we are fighting for this,
(57:16):
but there is more to fight for, and we want
to put this struggle at service for the change of
the whole system of all the problems in the society
that we experience, but not only to struggle against all
these problems, but also try to build an alternative, and
(57:39):
in this sense, the project of the social integrated public factory.
I think it's a fundamental example of the necessity of
struggling against the problems we face, but also in the
meantime already beginning to build an alternative because we cannot
wait the final victory to start questioning ourselves about what
(58:04):
do we want?
Speaker 13 (58:05):
What do we need?
Speaker 14 (58:06):
But we should start from now to build the world
we want to live in.
Speaker 15 (58:12):
So different society, that's all we've got time for in
(58:39):
this episode.
Speaker 1 (58:40):
If you want to learn more about the Florence Working
Class Literature Festival and the GKN workers struggle, we recommend
you check out our Working Class Literature episodes ten and eleven.
You can also find out more info on the web
page for this episode link in the show notes. It's
only support from you, our listeners, which allows us to
make these podcasts, So if you appreciate our work, please
(59:01):
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 about this podcast
and give us a five star review on your favorite
(59:23):
podcast app. Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this
podcast possible, and a special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando
Lopez Ojeda, Nick Williams, and Old Norm. Our theme tune
for this episode is Okupiamola, as sung on a GK
and workers demonstration in twenty twenty four. Many thanks to
Real News for letting us use their recording and you
(59:43):
can find a link to the documentary it's taken from
on the web page for this episode. This episode was
edited by Jesse French. Anyway, that's it for today. Hope
you enjoyed the episode and thanks for listening.
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