Italy’s Longest-Ever Factory Occupation Shows How Workers Can Transform Production

By Francesca Gabbriellini and Giacomo Gabbuti - Jacobin, April 4, 2024

On Saturday, March 25, the streets of Florence were filled with thousands of people from all over Italy, marching in solidarity with workers from the former GKN factory in nearby Campi Bisenzio. The struggle at the plant had begun on July 9, 2021, when the auto parts producer’s 422 workers were abruptly dismissed. Contrary to the plans of the owner — British investment fund Melrose Industries — the workers occupied the plant, and they have been keeping it (and the millions of euros’ worth of machinery it contains) in order ever since. It is now the longest factory occupation in Italian history.

In that time, the workers at the ex-GKN plant have launched a massive solidarity movement, fighting to prevent the plant from being yet another milestone in Italy’s long deindustrialization. As we explained in an article last summer, this dispute is remarkable for many reasons. It comes amidst a political situation where the Left in its various forms has been shut permanently out of Parliament and increasingly marginalized in society, and indeed where post-fascist movements have extended their grip. It also confronts the generally dismal power relations in the world of labor — Italy is the only Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country where wages have fallen in real terms over the last three decades.

But the period since last summer has also seen many developments: not only because of the broader solidarity for the workers, but also because this dispute is combined with the fight for a just transition. Tellingly of this broader cause, the call for the March 25 march was signed by hundreds of associations — from unions to movement spaces, via students, parties, social centers, civic lists, and personalities, including international figures such as Miguel Benasayag, Adrian Lyttelton, and João Pedro Stedile. It closed with the slogan: “Let’s break the siege, let’s try to make the future.”

The ”siege” against these workers takes the form of the nonpayment of their salaries for some six months — a “de facto dismissal,” which has put them in the absurd condition of having neither social security nor salary, even as they deal with soaring inflation. The “future” here invoked means public intervention so that the liquidation procedure by the new owners is stopped, and the workers are allowed to pursue their own “reindustrialization from below.”

Indeed, for decades, Italian institutions have given up on any attempt at industrial policy — a situation that hasn’t changed with Europe’s post-pandemic recovery plans. The ex-GKN Factory Collective and those in solidarity with it are instead taking their own initiative to move toward a green transition. The aim: to reverse the spiral of relocations, divestments, and starvation wages that Italy has been heading down for at least three decades. To avoid a once great factory ending up as an empty shed, ready to become an eco-monster or the latest site of real estate speculation, the workers are striving to recover it on a cooperative basis, advancing their own plan to produce photovoltaic panels, batteries, and cargo bikes.

The workers’ collective has created broad alliances, with movements ranging from feminists to green causes. This is particularly visible in the climate strikes it has organized together with youth-led movements over the last two years. The ex-GKN struggle thus combines what is also called an “old” form of mobilization — the defense of workers’ jobs and a distinct class-based view of social relations — with a “new” one, i.e., the fight against climate change. For want of public intervention, it has launched a crowdfunding drive also supported by the Italian wing of Fridays for Future, with a view to “popular shareholding” in the future cooperative. But to understand why this support is important, it is worth explaining how we got to this point.

Read the rest of the article here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.