Until fifty years ago, the term "warm autumn" meant a period of sunny weather with mild temperatures after the first frosts of autumn and before the cold winters: the American Indian summer or the French-Canadian l'été des indiens .
But since 1969 we use the term "warm autumn” takes on a completely different meaning and becomes synonymous with seasons characterized by violent union struggles.
Like all events in history, the hot autumn of 1969 also has a symbolic beginning on July 3 at the Mirafiori in Turin and an end on the following December 21 in Rome with the signing of the renewal of the national contract for metalworkers.
At the end of the sixties Torino it is now a factory town, the Detroit of Europe. In the space of twenty years it has gone from 700 inhabitants to over 1.200.000.
National car production, with the exception of Alfa Romeo in Milan and Autobianchi in Desio, is concentrated in the Fiat plants in Turin, in Mirafiori with over 60 thousand workers, in the Lingotto and Rivalta plants with another 20 thousand each, in the Lancia plants in Borgo San Paolo and Chivasso with their 10 employees, as well as the industrial vehicle factories or Grandi Motori and the forges and foundries.
I am therefore in 1969 more than 150 Fiat workers in Turin, including middle managers, technicians and employees of the Central Bodies, not to forget the significant number of employees involved in direct and indirect supply activities gravitating to the Turin automotive area.
The increases in automobile production to cope with the mass motorization of the country were made possible thanks to progressives waves of workers coming first, in the fifties, from the Piedmontese provinces of Asti and Cuneo and from the north-east, in particular from Polesine, and subsequently, in the sixties, from the southern regions.
The growing number of Fiat workers will throw a crisisGiven the ever-increasing costs, the corporate welfare system wanted by Valletta, based on corporate healthcare (MALF: Fiat workers' company insurance), on services for families (in particular nursery schools and vocational schools), and above all on availability of accommodation with Fiat manufacturers.
La housing shortage, despite the huge phalansteries that have sprung up like mushrooms in the suburbs, and the "expensive rents” (accompanied by hateful discrimination against southern immigrants) will be one of the causes of social anger that will enter the factories.
There had already been some signs in Turin in July 1962, when, following the wage agreement signed by Fiat only with the powerful company union SIDA (Italian Auto Union) and Uilm-Uil as an advance of future contractual increases nationals, there were three days of protest by the other non-signatory unions with street clashes and the assault of "professional agitators" (as defined by the Police Headquarters) on the headquarters of the Uilm.
Among the political and trade union controversies however, everyone underestimated the discontent that was growing in the factories, starting from Fiat, which decided shortly after to build another large factory in Rivalta, also on the outskirts of Turin.
These were the years in which antagonism and aggressiveness coalesce in a working-class population, mostly on assembly lines, made up of young people mainly of recent immigration from the south, who pour all their social discomfort into the factory in the transition from a peasant culture to an industrial culture not yet assimilated.
In this context, the bureaucratic structures for representing workers, such as the now obsolete Internal Commissions, lose effectiveness, and the emergence and development new unofficial forms of representation, based on the principles of direct democracy.
The new subjects that catalyze consensus are the delegates, often the worst hotheads, elected by the workers of its homogeneous group with non-formalized and very approximate procedures, and gathered in works councils.
Starting from the late spring of 1969, the Fiat factories witnessed a process of widening the conflict which finds above all in the delegates and in the factory councils, outside the orthodox trade union structures, the most significant organizational and action tools,
In the months of May and June, Mirafiori is crossed by a series of wildcat strikes (the wild cats of the English trade unionist tradition) with individual processing departments going on strike without warning, causing production stops in the other upstream or downstream departments, with consequent suspension of work and the release of all workers.
The reasons for the strikes are the so-called “workloads” deemed excessive, but there is no doubt that social unease from the outside reverberates inside the workplace.
The official unions, to resume the situation under their direction, they inaugurate the season, which will have a large following in the years to come, of the “political strikes” declaring a general strike in Turin for 3 July against high rents and the massive use of evictions, claiming a solution to the housing problem.
Unfortunately that July 3, 1969 will be a day of scuffles and clashes in the square with the police.
In the morning, a few thousand striking workers gather in front of the Mirafiori gates (4/5 thousand according to sources at the time) to take part in a counter-demonstration, in opposition to the one organized by the trade unions, called by the Workers and Students Assembly, i.e. say from the extreme fringes of the Turin student movement, represented by Potere Operaio, Lotta Continua and Servire il Popolo.
Clashes with the police they soon began when the order arrived to break up the unauthorized march the demonstrators were forming. Someone started throwing stones at the police and charges and scuffles followed with the groups of demonstrators who had spread out in the streets around Mirafiori.
Around 14 pm, coinciding with the arrival of the workers on the second shift, the demonstrators, mostly young southern workers and antagonistic students, regrouped in Corso Traiano, in front of the Mirafiori Office Building, and resumed clashes with the police and carabinieri.
It was a real battle, with wounded and bruised on both sides, which lasted until late evening, with the strikers who, having climbed to the upper floors of the buildings under construction on Corso Traiano, threw various construction materials at the police forces for hours.
The news of the clashes spread rapidly in the city and thousands of Turin residents, including the writer, contrary to their nature of lying nen (people who don't move), converged on the spot to observe in amazement and incredulous what was happening.
It was the start of the "warm autumn".
Starting from the autumn of 1969 and up to the march of the forty thousand of October 1980 in fact, there won't be a national or company contractual season at Mirafiori that is not pervaded by internal strikes with "sweeper" marches, both for the workshops and for the offices, with the bosses forced, sometimes by kicking their asses, to parade at the head of the processions, or by "persuading" pickets at the entrances from the first light of dawn in the case of strikes of 8 hours per shift. And then, to press on the closure of the disputes, we finally arrived at the so-called "final push" with the total blockage of the establishments even for one or more weeks.
