Thirty-five years agoIt was precisely in this period that the hardest trade union conflict took place, from the second post-war period to today, not only at Fiat but throughout the country.
From 11 September to 16 October 1980, the trade union, instead of confrontation with the company, chose a confrontation against a wall, blocking Mirafiori and the other car factories for 35 days in the belief that sooner or later Fiat would give in: the watchword was "either give up Fiat or Fiat give up".
What the union didn't realize was that Fiat was fighting for its survival: Fiat did not give in and the union faced a "historic" defeat which in a short space of time led to the dissolution of the most powerful unitary union of the time (the Federation of Metalworkers, better known as FLM) and to a radical change in the system of union relations in the country with the breaking of the federative pact between CGIL, CISL and UIL, culminating with the referendum on the escalator supported by the CGIL alone alongside the PCI.
In 1980 Fiat Auto had a workforce of about 136.000 workers in Italy, of which 92.000 in Turin (Alfa Romeo was still a State shareholding).
In order to deal with the seriousness of the situation that had arisen also as a result of the global automobile crisis, Fiat, at the beginning of September of that year, announced the need to resort to drastic cuts in production and consequent interventions on personnel through the placement of around 23.000 workers in the Turin area on the zero-hour layoffs.
When the union was completely closed to any possibility of suspension from work, albeit with layoffs, Fiat was forced, on 11 September, to start a staff reduction procedure for around 14.000 workers.
On the same afternoon of 11 September, processions of workers leave the Mirafiori factories to invade the office building; they will not succeed but Mirafiori, and from the day after the other Turin factories, will remain stationary and picketed until October 16th when Luciano Lama, the then general secretary of the CGIL, will definitively close the dispute, albeit with strong disputes, in a fiery assembly at the Mirafiori body shops.
After more than a month of blockade of factories (and two general strikes in the country and the fall of the Cossiga government), with the union dreaming of transforming Mirafiori into a new Gdansk and of repeating the Solidarnosc victory of the previous month with the Polish government , what had to happen happened: on 14 October a silent procession through the streets of Turin of over 40.000 Fiat workers who wanted to go back to work was the element that resolved the conflict.
On the same night a hypothetical agreement was signed with the general secretaries of the trade union confederations which ratified the proposals that Fiat has always made: the withdrawal of the collective redundancy procedure and the placement in layoffs
extraordinary of 23.000 workers until June 1983.
The hypothesis of an agreement submitted to the "council" of delegates, meeting in a cinema in Turin, will not be voted on in consideration of the violent climate of opposition and will therefore be referred to the factory assemblies convened for the following day.
Il vote of the assemblies it will be characterized by strong contrasts and episodes of violence: if Lama at the Carrozzerie is only challenged, at the Mechanics Pierre Carniti of the Cisl and at the Presse Giorgio Benvenuto of the Uil they will also be attacked.
The CGIL, CISL and UIL confederations assess that, even if the results were highly uneven, the agreement hypothesis should be considered approved.
Back to work after 35 days!
With the defeat of the FLM metalworkers' union in the Mirafiori "stronghold", a decade characterized by permanent conflicts in the manufacturing departments, strikes with "hard" picketing at the entrances, fires in the paint shops, violence against the bosses, and unfortunately injuries and terrorist assassinations.
Starting from the hot autumn of 1969, not a contractual season, both national and company, passes that is not pervaded by internal strikes with "sweeper" marches, both for the workshops and for the offices, with the bosses forced, sometimes to butt kicking, parading in the front row with FLM flags in hand, or by “persuasion” picketing at the entrances from the crack of dawn in the case of 8-hour strikes per shift. And then, to press on the closure of the contractual dispute, we arrive at the "final push" with the total blockage of the factories even for a week.
In short, in the seventies, not a year goes by without a trade union dispute with the relative forms and doses of conflict: pickets, internal marches, violence against leaders.
A hell that for a long time (and at least until the story of the 61 layoffs in the autumn of 1979) was underestimated or not perceived externally by public opinion and by political and social forces. For all these years, conflict and antagonism have been the values on which the unitary metalworkers' union of the FLM has been inspired, which brought together the Fim-Cisl, the Fiom-Cgil and the Uilm-Uil (sic!).
The other trade union present in Fiat, Fismic, remains on moderate and corporate positions, which continues to maintain a consensus among those workers who still recognize themselves in the values of collaboration in the workplace (and who will be discovered after 1980 to still be many). .
The trade union representation system is based on the principles of direct democracy with the delegates gathered in "works councils". The delegates are elected by the workers of their homogeneous group, with non-formalized and very approximate procedures, regardless of union militancy: the FLM then provides them with the legal coverage of company union representatives in order to be able to take advantage of the paid leave and the guarantees provided by the Statute of the Workers.
In this way the union brings the worst elements into the factory, those who manage to coagulate antagonism and aggression in a working population, mostly on assembly lines, of recent immigration from the south, which pours into the factory all its social unease in the transition from a peasant culture to an industrial culture not yet assimilated.
While the workers' struggles escalated and the strikes multiplied, another tragedy, the most serious of all, was taking hold, the terrorism of the Red Brigades, which made Fiat the preferred target.
In the course of those years there were two kidnappings, about forty being shot in the legs and five assassinations, among leaders and executives.
In the autumn of 1979, the terrorist murder of a manager, followed a few days later by the umpteenth kneeling of another, combined with the trade union's behavior of indifference, or in the worst case of proximity, not only with regard to violence of union struggles against managers and bosses but even in the face of Red Brigades terrorism, make Fiat take the decision to start with an initial clean-up operation with the dismissal of 61 troublemakers, whose behavior had already been under observation for some time.
The 61 were fired for indiscipline and incorrect behavior, but the general belief was that Fiat had tried to hit the supporters of terrorism in the factory.
The FLM sided with the fired: as one of its secretary said "better a terrorist in the factory than an innocent fired", but none of the 61 returned to the factory.
These layoffs restored confidence in the structure of the workshop heads: reports of chronic absentees began to arrive, of work performed negligently, of poor returns, of illegal commercial activities carried out in the departments, which at times had become veritable souks.
The result was that within a few months more than 8.000 people left the company amid disciplinary layoffs, resignations and voluntary exits. The wind had changed: at Mirafiori, in the space of a few months, absenteeism from 20% collapsed to the physiological level of 2%.
The opposite phenomenon arose, that of "presenteism", which in the daily balancing between workforce and production, immediately highlighted an excess of production capacity and monstrous personnel surpluses that had accumulated over the years, thanks to the public system of public employment, which inhibited the selection of personnel at the time.
The plants, in particular the body shops where the rates of micro-conflict and absenteeism were higher, had reached levels of inefficiency of 20-25%.
In other words, the state of crisis of Fiat Auto and the drastic initiatives that had to be taken immediately emerged in all their drama.
If this reference framework is not clear, it is impossible to understand why Fiat could not "give up" in those 35 days: it was not just a question of identifying solutions for the management of surplus personnel, but the rules had to be re-established of civilized life by removing from the factories as many organizers of the conflict as possible, whether they were union activists or not.
As in fact happened at Mirafiori, and beyond, from that moment on.
