Porto Marghera – the last fi rebrands

Contents Porto Marghera – The last fi rebrands 3 On the DVD you can fi nd... 4 Presentation of the “Augusto Finzi workers‘ archive“ 7 History of the Porto Marghera industrial zone 10 The title of the documentary has various meanings: the Italian word fuoco means ‘fi re’, Short chronology 15 and also a ‘shootout’. In this case, the word also means the fl ames of the petrochemical The class struggles in Italy 1968-1973 18 Unions versus workers autonomy 22 works that make the industrial zone visible from miles around. Its future is uncertain. Operaismo 24 The environmental damage that it has caused cannot be overlooked. The hundreds of About the history of the Potere Operaio (workers‘ power) 28 deaths from cancer can never be undone. The most polluting parts of the industry have The history of the workers‘ committee of Porto Marghera since been outsourced to East Asia, but Italy is still among the largest PVC producers. Talk by Italo Sbrogiò, June 2006 33 In the fi lm, the fi re in the industrial wasteland where the illegal immigrants warm “The workers should take things into their own hands“ themselves is a symbol for the new class composition which has turned an emigration Interview with Gianni Sbrogiò, October 2006 48 country into an immigration one. But the phrase ‘the last fi rebrands’ also refers to the heat waves of class struggles that Appendix swept across this industrial zone in the 1950s, 60s and 70s; struggles that characterised The Montedison and Enichem trials 53 the area and left a lasting impact upon it. Sometimes history takes a violent leap: in The dioxin cloud over Seveso 56 1968 inexperienced peasants from the countryside were catapulted into the centre of The new chemical industry EC directive and the German unions 57 the worldwide revolution. No working class had previously identifi ed the factory as a “Struggle is worth it“ trigger of fatal diseases and as a destroyer of life as clearly as they did in this struggle. From a meeting about the struggle The union expelled the organisers of the struggles. Those who were expelled found against asbestos, Padua, March 2006 58 their own organisational forms. Porto Marghera’s Autonomous Assembly in the early Refusal of work Text of the workers‘ committees in Porto Marghera from 1970 62 1970s not only co-ordinated the struggles in the factories of the industrial zone, but also squatted houses, formed neighbourhood committees, organised price reductions The characters in the fi lm 68 in the supermarkets, and together with thousands of workers burned their electricity Glossary 74 bills. The unions and the government could only react. 2 3 On the DVD you can fi nd … 2006), the chemicals industry and the relevant unions are fi ghting hard against the The fi lm Porto Marghera – gli ultimi fuochi, created by Manuela Pellarin in 2004. introduction of a new EC directive for the chemical industry which includes a ban on It was fi lmed with funding from the Province of Venice, amongst others. It was fi rst the usage of toxic material if there is a possible replacement material. screened in Venice and was going to have been screened on Arte TV, but then nobody wanted to hear about the fi lm any more. We saw it for the fi rst time in January 2005 The fi lm juxtaposes various levels: at a private screening and were excited because here, speaking in their own words, were • The history of the workers struggle in the 1950s and 60s in the industrial zone. the protagonists of the struggles of the 1950s to 70s: the workers. • Environmental damage and disease through the industry. The production company ControCampo was pleased that someone was interested in • Discussions among young workers in 2002 about the closure of their department. the fi lm, and gave us the rights to it. So we can now give it out as a free addition to • The new composition of the workers through migration. Wildcat subscribers. Because we could not afford to buy the rights to use the original music (Johnny Cash ...), we have completely re-done the fi lm‘s soundtrack: the only The hidden history music left from the original is the two songs by Gualtiero Bertelli, who accompanied Three of the workers interviewed were activists with the radical organisation Potere the struggles with his guitar at the time. Operaio which aimed at the autonomous organisation of the working class and built We have subtitled the fi lm in German, English, Spanish, Polish, Slovakian, Serbo- up its own structures outside the unions. We have collated material about this on the Croation, Romanian, Russian and Turkish. The French subtitles were already there. following pages of this booklet. As an addition you can fi nd on the DVD a portrait of Augusto Finzi, in which he At the end, we have reprinted an old text of the Porto Marghera Workers’ Committee gives a personal resume of his political activities. Manuela Pellarin made this new cut from 1970. You will need to have a little patience here to get used to the language, even from the existing material and showed it at the presentation of the ‘Augusto Finzi’ more so because it is [a translation of] an old German translation, which copied the workers archive. We subtitled it in German and English. pompous Italian language of workerism.

Precarious work, subcontractors, poisoning In the following texts the word ‘worker’ is used without its feminine form [which exists The old workers talk about the situation in the 1950s and 60s in the booming indus- in German], because in Porto Marghera even the offi ce workers were men. If women trial zone and how they fought against it. The topics they mention are very relevant worked there at all, it was in the canteen. In the Veneto in the 1960s and 70s, house- today: wife status within marriage was still very common. The feminist current that also arose • Precarious work with four week contracts was the rule in the shipyard. in Veneto outside and against Potere Operaio instigated the ‘Wages for Housework’ • Similarly, subcontractors were very common, employing workers who came from far campaign as a demand for a political wage for reproductive work. away, for low wages and under bad conditions. The workers from Porto Marghera led a huge, very militant strike against the subcontractors, demanding direct employment All the concepts or names printed in blue and italics can be found either in the list of and equal treatment for all workers. people appearing in the fi lm or in the glossary (sorted by topics, not alphabetically) at • The handling of highly toxic materials is not a matter of the past: right now (autumn the end of this booklet.!!!!!!" 4 5 Presentation of the `Augusto Finzi‘ workers‘ archive

Marghera, 9 June 2006

Until today very little has been documented On the 9 June 2006 the workers’ archive about the story of the workers’ struggle in is offi cially opened in the Marghera public the 1960s and 70s in Porto Marghera. The library. Some of the original newspapers violent wave of repression after the 7 April and leafl ets are on display, many of which 1979 which landed many comrades from we have previously only heard about. the Workers’ Committee in jail for years, Many of them were copied on a stencil also led to most of those involved gathering duplicator, as was common in those days. all the materials they had at home, burning First the deputy mayor gives a speech, them or hiding them somewhere – and for- then a lefty sociologist who has written a getting them. book about the dangers of Petrolchimico, Augusto Finzi, an important organiser in then an archivist employed by the state, the Petrolchimico, donated his entire collec- a young woman who had not been born tion of material to the city council of Venice when it was all happening: the occupati- as the basis for a workers’ archive shortly on of the railway station, red fl ags in the before his death from cancer in 2004. In trees, the burning barricades on the road the last two years, a few more old comrades dam to Venice. met and founded the archive. They brought A hundred people are sitting or stan- along their materials and recaptured some of ding around the library. One of the old the discussions from those times. workers interviewed in the documentary 6 7 Porto Marghera – Gli ultimi fuochi, Italo develop a career, while others struggled Sbrogiò, gives a talk. He reads out a long through for years selling homemade eco- presentation* from his notes, recounting logical jam. many names. It is gratifying to him today There are only a few workers in the to sit here in this public library in com- room. Workers’ autonomy was not a memoration of Augusto Finzi, who had to church whose members join for life. The sit in jail for several years after the 1979 explosion of workers’ rage in 1968 was anti-terror assault in Italy. For him it is spontaneous and momentary, says Finzi gratifying to recount the names of acti- in the interview. Life-long political acti- vists who founded this archive after the vism was no more of a goal than life-long local press had libelled them so viciously factory work was. " during the late 1970s. And he still has to fi ght to ensure that their names are not * A summarised translation of this talk can drowned by those of all the professional be found on page 33 of this booklet. supporters who decorate themselves with the exhibition and threaten to take it over. In the room, there are comrades in struggle and supporters and friends: a lawyer who had defended the workers on sick leave, who must be about 90 years old, and the fi lmmaker of the do- cumentary who shows the newly cut in- terview with Augusto Finzi. Many of the comrades from those days had to look for some kind of source of income during the barren 1980s, in order to survive: they became travel agents or ran campsites, became reps for some product or other, left the country… Some still managed to 8 9 1920s: The defeat of the rural proletariat in Veneto The fi rst industrial zone through the formation of the Italian state in First industrial zone The industrialisation of the Veneto region 1866 resulted in an emigration wave. En- couraged by the local clergy, they migrated Mestre began very cautiously in the middle of the 19th century. The liberal ruling class of to South and North America and later Aus- the region was strongly rooted in agricul- tralia. The local powers only wanted them ture and distrustful of new industry. After somewhere so far away that they would not come back and bring strange new ideas Island with 1848 there was a fear of large concentra- tions of proletarians. with them. The emigration should be fi nal. Venice old town This began to change after 1936 when fo- As a result of this fear, although indus- reign workers were being recruited by Nazi Lagoon try grew noticeably in the Veneto after the formation of the Italian state in 1866, Germany: In 1935 in the province of Padua it did not affect the region politically or alone there were 30,000 unemployed – out socially very much. The factories were of a total population of 400,000. In 1949-50 the Minister of Work and the History of the mostly situated along the railway lines, i.e. on the outskirts of the towns. The local powers sent huge numbers of people Porto Marghera only large textile factory was in Schio, over the ocean for the last time – from Friuli, which borders the Veneto. After the expulsion industrial zone at the foot of the Alps, called Lanerossi. With 8,000 employees, it was the fi rst fac- of the Italian population from Yugoslavia, 30,000 Italians migrated to Australia. tory anywhere in Italy and it was run in a semi-feudal manner. The railway bridge to Venice and a new trading port were bu- the Community of Mestre was expropria- ilt, but in contrast to other towns in the ted (it became part of Venice in1926) and Marghera (formally Venezia Porto Marg- Since the 14th century successive rulers Mediterranean area there was no modern given over to the Società Porto Industria- hera) lies on the stretch of mainland have carried out huge drainage and regu- industrial zone until the early 1920s. le di Venezia. This was supposed to fulfi l within the Venice lagoon. The name co- lation projects on the mainland, which During the First World War, the in- three aims: an industrial port, the creation mes from Venetian and actually means: was the hinterland of the largest sea power dustrialists of Venice decided to build an of an industrial zone and building a new where the sea was (Mar gh‘era); it is dried of the Adriatic. industrial zone in Marghera. So in 1917 a residential area on the mainland in order up tideland. quarter of what was then the Territory of to relieve the lagoon area. 10 11 During the 1920s and 30s the shipyards grate. In the early 1950s the Christian were the key industry. In the 1940s, du- Democrats (DC) organised a congress ring the war, 35,000 people were already which discussed the problems posed by employed there. Most of the workers in emigration for the ruling class: If people this fi rst industrial zone came from the went to Germany, France, or even Milan, Second industrial zone ‚urban‘ working class of Venice, Mestre and then came back, then they would Mestre and Chioggia where there had been rail- want running water, a fridge, and at least ways and shipyards since the 19th cen- a scooter here as well. tury. Here there were communist cores. During the war, the workers hid deserters 1950s: and other refugees. The second industrial zone The building of a second industrial zone With the end of the Second World War was intended to secure control over the Lagoon the shipyard boom also came to an end, local proletariat: the construction of a Island with because the ship owners preferred to buy modern chemical plant with an industri- Venice old town redundant American ships which had al port, the processing of minerals from been mass produced in the previous years. Sardinia, shipyards etc. were intended to Waves of redundancies and closures fol- create work and curb emigration. Politi- lowed. In 1950 the workers at Breda suc- cally, this was a compromise between the Adriatic sea cessfully fought against the closure of that Christian Democrats and the industrial shipyard. After an armed police attack on alliance, above all with Montecatini and workers, these organised a huge demo in Edison, which was to set into motion a Venice. The proletariat in Venice was left controlled development of Veneto – the The workers for the new factories in The Petrolchimico wing. The Communist Party (PCI) was workers were not to be infected by the di- the second industrial zone were often re- present in the factories, although without sease of the agricultural workers in Emilia cruited from far away villages where the The petrochemical plant originally belon- waving their political fl ags around. In or the metal workers in Milan. Padua was church and the DC exercised total con- ged to the electrical company Edison. Fol- the countryside however the Party was also home to a large unit of Celere riot trol. Many of them owned some land lowing the nationalisation of electricity absent, rural Veneto was a ‘white zone’ police, who had already been deployed themselves, or farmed as sharecroppers. A production and the setting-up of ENEL dominated by the Catholic Church. The against agricultural workers struggles in recommendation by the village priest was in 1962-63, Edison bought Montecatini only way out of the poverty was to emi- Ferrara. a requirement for getting a job. for the money the state had paid for its 12 13 electricity plants and changed its name town of Mestre without regard for any Short Chronology to Montedison. The Petrolchimico started kind of urban planning, all the more so operating in 1951. The fi rst departments because the local council was busy con- were Chlorine Sodium Carbonate, TR1 centrating on Venice old town. For a long 1967 A few employees of Petrolchimi- 1970 The government passes the sta- (tetrachloroethylene production), AC2 time the periphery around Mestre was a co in Marghera found the group Potere tute of workers rights. In Marghera the (acetylene), CV1 (monomeric vinyl chlo- dormitory town almost entirely without Operaio (Workers‘ Power). They stand as outsourcing to subcontractors slips out ride – MVC), CV3 (polyvinyl chloride – infrastructure. candidates on the CGIL list for the Com- of the control of the companies and the PVC), and in 1959 the CV6 department. missione interna, and win a majority. peace-keeping out of the control of the Later on, the plant also started producing Today, the islands of Venice have about Contact with the student movement. First political parties and unions. In August the leafl ets and the newspaper Potere Ope- whole of Marghera is shut down by street sulphuric acid, fl uoric acid etc. 70,000 residents, steadily decreasing, raio – political newspaper of the workers blockades and clashes with the police, The processing equipment at Marghera while about 270,000 people live in Me- of Porto Marghera are distributed. who fi re shots and wound some demons- was initially a copy of the machinery used stra-Marghera. trators. by Monsanto in Missouri and Tennessee. Today about 3,000 people work in 1968 February: Students occupy Monsanto also sold technically outdated Petrol chimico which refi nes crude oil and the architecture department in Venice. 1971 In various towns in Italy, including patents to the Italians, outsourcing PVC produces Phosgene and MVC. " April: textile workers‘ strike in Valdagno. Marghera, Potere Operaio and Il Mani- and phosgene production to this country. 1 August: strike in Porto Marghera for the festo jointly form the Political Committees In the USA at the time, phosgene was production bonus with the demand of an (Comitati Politici), which only function for produced in the Arizona desert, whereas additional L 5000 for everyone. Barrica- a few months. The workers‘ committes or- in Italy it was being produced two kilo- des and occupation of the Mestre railway ganises hard struggles at department level metres away from St. Mark‘s Square in station. for the reduction of work time. Venice! The industrialisation of Italy took place with total disregard for the environ- 1969 `Hot autumn‘ in Turin. Struggles 1972 Workers‘ assemblies in Petrolchi- ment or workers’ health. of the chemical and metal workers in Mar- mico and Châtillon turn down the chemi- ghera. Formation of the workers‘ commit- cal workers‘ collective wage agreement. tee at Ammi and election into the newly The `autonomous assembly of Marghera‘ In those years, the Porto Marghera Petrol- formed factory council. December: new (Assemblea Autonoma di Porto Marg- chimico was one of the most important national collective wage agreement. The hera) is formed. Its core is workers of chemical complexes in Europe. It reached response of the right wing and the secret the committees from Petrolchemico and its largest expansion during the 1960s. services: the Strategy of tension; the left is Ammi, worker comrades from Lotta Con- The building boom of the 1960s and 70s framed for the Piazza Fontana bombing tinua, employees from Petrolchemico and allowed for the rampant growth of the in Milan. Châtillon as well as metal workers from 14 15 DIMM. The area of struggle is expanded: phlet about taking sickies. The fi rst num- the PCI. DC head Aldo Moro is kidnap- Paletti, head of production at Icmesa, the neighbourhoods in town, infl ation, rent, ber of the four-sided weekly newspaper ped by the Red Brigades. chemical factory in Seveso. electricity and gas bills. The main aim is ControLavoro (Against Work) is printed. At the beginning of the 1980s, 4000 organising from below and outside of the It appears every month until 1980. 1979 7 April 1979: most of the aca- political prisoners are sitting in Italian unions. They criticize the politics of the po- demics in the leadership of Autonomia jails, accused of taking part in or suppor- litical groups. 1976 Chemical accident in Seveso. Operaia i.e. ex-Potere Operaio are arres- ting armed actions. Many people are on The three unions CGIL, CISL and UIL ted based on the assumption of Paduan the run, or go into exile. Investigations are 1973 The workers‘ committee joins decide to support the austerity measures public prosecutor (and PCI member) Ca- underway against about 20,000 people. with factory groups in other towns. A joint at the congress in EUR, Rome, in order to logero that Red Brigades and Autonomia September: Fiat announces 15,000 congress takes place in March in Bolo- reha bilitate the state budget. German Prime Organizzata have a common leadership. redundancies and temporarily lays off gna. Start of a common newspaper. Minister Schmidt threatens the Italian The arrested are charged with `subversive another 23,000 workers while the go- June: break-up of the national organisa- government with the withdrawal of credit association‘ and insurrection against the vernment goes on paying their wages tion of Potere Operaio. if the PCI is admitted into the ruling coa- state. This is the start of political mass ar- (cassa integrazione). The workers begin September: the fi rst issue of Lavoro Zero lition. rests, not seen on this scale for decades. a week-long strike. The march by 40,000 [zero work] appears. Struggle against un- In summer, Fiat sacks 61 workers on white-collar workers and foremen on the healthy working conditions, in cooperati- 1977 A new youth movement spreads grounds of political violence in the factory 24 October signifi es the defeat of the on with the health workers from Padua. across Italy, starting from Bologna. The (‚terrorism‘). Fiat workers, and is seen as the end of Struggle for shorter work time in the dan- employers‘ association and the unions an epoch. gerous departments. sign an agreement which abolishes all au- 1980 24 January: in the third round tomatic wage adjustments, cancels seven of police raids more comrades of Contro- 1981 20 May: the boss of Petrolchimico, 1974 The Autonomous Assembly forms public holidays, ensures the right of bosses Lavoro are arrested, including Gianni Giuseppe Tagliercio, is kidnapped by the a struggle committee against infl ation. to transfer a worker to another department Sbrogiò. The Red Brigades try to expand Venetian branch of the Red Brigades and Campaigns for the fi xed price of bread or location, and introduces tough measu- their infl uence with actions in Veneto and fi nally killed on the 7 July. The action is [pane comune] and for Autoriduzione res against absenteeism. in particular in the industrial zone. On 29 carried out simultaneously with three other (self reduction) of electricity and gas bills. The strike in Marghera on the fi rst can- January in Mestre they kill the vice-director kidnappings. It is the last common action After four months of struggle the govern- celled holiday is a failure. The workers‘ of Petrolchemico, Sergio Gori. before the Red Brigades split. " ment and the unions sign an agreement to committee attempts autonomous compa- A few months later they kill the head of lower the price of electricity. ny-wide wage negotiations. Workers take the anti-terror department in Venice, Com- the unions to court over the cancelled bo- missioner Alfredo Albanese. The media 1975 Crisis of the workers struggles. nus pay. link the workers‘ committee and its news- Repression and the beginning of restruc- papers with these attacks. turing in the factories. The Autonomous 1978 The DC government‘s `national 5 February: a squad of the organisa- Assembly of Porto Marghera prints a pam- solidarity‘ under Andreotti is supported by tion Prima Linea kills the engineer Paolo

16 17 From reconstruction to the Hot Autumn – the class struggles in Italy 1968-1973

In the 1960s the development of industry of the workers, capital went into crisis. A materials processing industry, iron and steel working class. This explains many of the in Italy lay far behind that of England, deep recession put the breaks on the new production, communication and transport particularities of the class struggles in Ita- France or West Germany. The unions and struggles. (motorways). Private capital was mainly ly, where the divide between the workers the PCI were active in the partnership un- The next economic boom relied solely invested overseas – with the exception of in large companies and those in small and dertaking the reconstruction after the war. on the introduction of new exploitation the large family fi rms like Fiat, Pirelli or medium size fi rms posed a signifi cant In the mid 1950s there was an economic methods of long work time and a lot of Olivetti, which expanded massively. problem. The wage difference between miracle which mobilised huge numbers overtime. Work accidents increased shar- In the 1960s, there was a concentrati- employees in large and small companies of proletarians to move from the country- ply. The wages stayed far behind the dras- on of many large Italian corporations; the was signifi cantly wider in Italy than the side into the new factories. Despite the tic increase in work intensity. most important production areas were equivalent gap in Germany or France. boom, unemployment in Italy remained From 1963 to 1967 the production monopolised by a mere two dozen fi rms. Pensions were minimal. The wage zones high, therefore migration continued, not rose by 26.7 percent, whereas the invest- The state had a stake in 11 of the 22 lar- meant lower wages were fi xed in the poo- only from Southern Italy to Northern ment from 1963 to 65 was reduced by gest fi rms. The state holding companies rer regions. Italy (two million people between1955 one third and the number of employees IRI and ENI owned half of Montedison. The migration to the cities had trig- and 1965), but also to West Germany, dropped by 5.3 percent. This immediately brought a strong politi- gered a huge housing problem. There France or Switzerland. There was a per- The gross domestic product (GDP) of cal element into the class confrontation. was no adequate health provision. The manent oversupply of labour power and Italy rose by 64 percent in real terms from However, in overall terms Italian in- proportion of indirect tax was higher in this was used to lower the wages. There 1959-1968. Production per employee dustry was still characterised by small Italy than anywhere else in Western Eu- were practically no state benefi ts for the rose by 73 percent. Industry grew by 64 and medium-size companies. There were rope, and workers paid a disproportionate unemployed. percent in real terms from 1959-1968 and comparatively few workers in the large part of direct tax. White-collar and offi ce After a long quiet phase, in 1962 the- thereby increased its share of the GDP fi rms. The 24 largest concerns employed workers enjoyed extensive privileges, their re was the fi rst massive class struggle of from 6 to 47.6 percent. only 654,000 workers (blue and white wages were signifi cantly higher than those the new working class composition in the The economic growth in the 1960s was collar) in 1996 (Fiat 128,000, Montedi- of the manual workers. The state determi- centres of development, especially in Tu- to a large extent based on the expansion son 119,000 and Pirelli 67,000), which ned the conditions of exploitation and the rin. As an answer to the wage demands of state industries, mainly comprising raw amounted to 10 percent of the Italian social strata. 18 19 1968-69 increase in the production bonus to 5,000 they demanded equal wage increases for On the 12th of December 1969 the Lire for everyone. On the 1st of August everyone and attacked all forms of perfor- state secret service’s strategy of tension re- However, it wasn't long before the manu- 1968 Porto Marghera experienced the mance wages. Innovative organisational ached its fi rst climax: killing 16 people al workers in Italy began to demand their high point of the strike wave with bur- forms multiplied, taken on by the workers and wounding 87 in an explosive attack share of this development. The Italian ning barricades on the access road. from the students. Everyone was equally at Piazza Fontana in Milan. working class was at the forefront of the entitled to talk. In Turin a long meeting worldwide revolt against capitalist exploi- The `Hot autumn´, 1969 took place with workers and students, After 1975 there existed no more advan- tation in 1968. they discussed what had been happening ced form of workers’ organisation, either Social mobilisation also began in the The general strike in France was limited and wrote up leafl ets. Out of this came, at Fiat or in Porto Marghera. The workers universities in Italy, including in Venice, to 13 days in May 1968. In Italy strike among other things, the political groups had brought production to a total stand- and by the spring of 1968 it already swept waves blocked the increase in productivity Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio. still. They had showed that capitalist pro- into the factories in the Veneto region. for almost two years. The Hot autumn in Shortly before Unions vs. workers au- duction also produces death and disease. For example in Valdagno at the foot of the 1969 ranks as one of the most intensive tonomyChristmas, the metal union ma- They had begun self-organisation both Alps, in the Marzotto textile factory which collective mobilisations in the history of naged to settle on a wage agreement, in inside the factory and in life outside it. had until then been running mainly on class struggle. In 1969 over 300 million which all the demands were broadly met, But revolution in the sense of a material the basis of paternalism and boss-friendly hours of were lost due to strikes, 230 mil- including parity for blue and white collar overthrow of relations did not take place. unions, 6,000 workers went on strike for lion of these in industry. workers, three weeks a year holiday, abo- The reform of the unions and the ‘green- weeks against the introduction of a new The struggle over the renewal of the lition of unpaid days and elections for washed capitalism’ of today is unthinkable piece-work system. wage agreement in various industries department delegates. without the struggle of these workers. When, on the 19th of April, scabs were came to a head in the summer, most In Porto Marghera there was also an ex- " sneaked into the factory under police pro- sig nifi cantly in the Fiat factory in Tu- tensive mobilisation by metal and chemi- tection, the workers toppled the bronze rin. Against the lock-out of 35,000 Fiat cal workers. In March the workers at statue of the factory founders from its workers the unions called for the exten- Châtillon managed to enforce a 36-hour plinth as a symbol of the fi rm‘s despotism sion of the strikes. They demanded wage week. The fi rm made concessions while and fought with the 1,000-strong police increases of between 15 and 19 percent, a the unions were excluding the left acti- force brought from the whole region. 47 40-hour week etc. The workers in many vists. The year ended with a political vic- workers were arrested. On the 13th and factories went on strike spontaneously, tory for the unions; but the agreement for 14th of July, in the Petrolchimico factory in often against the negotiation logic of the the chemical works did not offer parity Porto Marghera, 4,000 manual and1,000 unions. Their demands were no longer for the blue and white collar workers, and white collar workers went on strike for an centred around productivity growth, so was seen as a fraud by the workers. 20 21 Unions vs. workers autonomy

After the Second World War, the union migrants from southern Italy and young ted without the union‘s involvement; the the right to strike, the right to workers movement in Italy split into politically communist cadre fought side by side union saw this as creating divisions within assemblies inside the company, protection oriented unions under huge pressure from against the police. the workforce. While the union defended against redundancies in companies with the USA, in order to isolate the commu- After the years of recession from 1963- the pay given to workers after they com- over 15 employees, health protection, end nists. The PCI and its CGIL union con- 1965, the next round of extensive wor- pleted their qualifi cations, the ‘mass wor- of the regional wage zones [gabbie salari- federation played a part in national re- kers‘ struggles were not until the end of kers’ were now demanding, for example, ali] etc.) construction and spoke in favour of forced the 1960s. equal wage increases for everyone as well The right to vote for (and retract!) the industrialisation of the country in order as the free election and retraction of de- department – and shortly afterwards also to create modern jobs. They supported The years 1968-1973 changed Italian partment delegates. By taking up these the factory council – delegates was inscri- the policy of linking income to producti- society. The quickest to change with this demands, the unions succeeded in nego- bed in numerous collective contracts. vity increases. Due to the restructuring of were the unions. In the confrontations tiating relatively good wage agreements, The ‘union of councils’, based on the companies for mass production, the old about the new wage agreement in 1969, especially in 1969. While the left radical new councils elected by the shop fl oor, skilled workers, who were the basis of the the unions faced sharp, sustained cri- groups mobilised principally around hig- was supported by many left activists. The PCI, lost their central place in the produc- ticism from the left groups, and above her wage demands, in order to confront main benefi ciary was CGIL (particularly tion processes. The newly employed, un- all the criticism of the workers themsel- the production of surplus value directly, the metalworkers union), which through skilled workers from the countryside were ves. The unions were being forced to go the unions were increasingly mobilising this body was able to use the factory seen as ‘apolitical’. The CGIL lost heavily further than they would actually have around issues outside of production e.g. councils to restructure and to win over in the works council (Commissione Inter- wished to, by the ever more self-organised for cheaper fl ats or pension reform. new cadre. na) elections, especially at Fiat. strikes in spring-summer 1969 at Fiat in At the beginning of the 1970s, the The question of ‘delegation’ and ‘rep- In 1962 thousands of Fiat workers Turin. The three rival unions CGIL, CISL long discussed statute of workers’ rights resentation’, also the representatives’ poli- protested in Turin against a separate wage and UIL agreed upon a much closer co- was passed by parliament. It was set up tics, was hotly discussed amongst the left agreement, which the UIL union had operation. The economy was booming to strengthen the collective and individual radicals – while Lotta Continua took part, signed with the company. The workers‘ and the workers could demand what they rights of workers in the companies (en- Potere Operaio criticized the unions and protest ended in street fi ghting lasting for wanted from the companies. In some de- titlement to equal treatment, freedom of set itself fi rmly on the side of building up days in Piazza Statuto in Turin, where im- partments better conditions were negotia- political expression inside the company, autonomous workers’ structures. " 22 23 Operaismo

Since the publication of the bestseller found a situation of change and upheaval: production, widespread use of cars, huge the new factories. ‘Class composition’ is Empire (2000) by Michael Hardt and old communist workers, who had been migration from the countryside etc. The more of a fi ghting slogan than a sociologi- Toni Negri the term Operaismus, derived politically sidelined, young, discontented unionists at electronics company Olivet- cal term; it actually means there is a con- from the Italian operaismo, has been on skilled workers, and unskilled workers, ti never really saw the new people from nection between the mode of production everyone’s lips in the German-speaking newly moved from the countryside, most- the countryside as real workers, and those and needs, between work organisation and world. However most people seem not ly from the South, working in the facto- workers themselves did not see their work the organisation of struggle, and between to be too clear that the term referred to ries, having been farmers before this. In as real work, but as ‘button pushing’. the direct daily activity of the workers and workers. (operaio = worker, hence also 1962, the fi rst struggle broke out. Starting The inquiries in 1961 attempted to in- their behaviour or practice. the common English translation ‘worke- from their involvement on a practical le- vestigate: the origin of the workers, their rism’.) vel, the comrades developed a theoretical precious work experiences, their accom- … instead of class consciousness At the end of the ‘50s and the begin- basis, radically applying Marxist method modation problems, what they do in their In a text that was later summarised in the ning of the ‘60s a radical left political to start from the workers‘ perspective. free time and their perception of the po- book Workers and Capital, Mario Tronti current emerged in Italy around the jour- wer relations in the factory. placed ‘labour power’ and ‘working class’ nal Quaderni Rossi (Red Notes) and later Class Composition... The fi rst ‘co’-inquiries focused on the in an antagonist relation to one another Classe Operaia (Working Class). This cur- With their inquiry work at Fiat and Oli- workers as a whole person. This is in to- for the fi rst time. Labour power identifi ed rent rejected the social democracy of the vetti, the group around Quaderni Rossi tal contrast to the ‘factoryism’ that much the workers as variable capital, a factor PCI and the PSI and their politics of na- wanted to create a new political relation later characterised so many of the ‘work- of production to be exploited. Working tional reconstruction. They brought the- to the working class. The problems and place interventions’ by the left, i.e. the re- class on the other hand is the seizing of a oretical weapons for the radical overturn struggles of the working class should once duction of the workers to their problems collective political power through the re- of relations, contributing hugely to the again become the central reference point in the workplace, focusing on the ques- fusal of the expenditure of human labour renewal of Marxism. But above all, they of revolutionary politics. This meant po- tions of wages, work time, breaks, and power. This differentiation provided the brought a political practice that oriented sing all the questions anew and above all work organisation. basis for the methodological differentia- itself around the actual struggles of the (re)searching the real working class. The Quaderni Rossi upheld the thesis that tion between the technical and political working class. They went to the workers’ deep and drastic changes of the ’50s had a new composition of the working class composition of the class. city of Turin to carry out workers’ inqui- changed the working class; replacement would emerge, i.e. that the workers would By starting radically from the position ries in the factories there. In Fiat they of coal by oil, expansion of conveyor belt put up a fi ght against the exploitation in of the workers, Tronti turned the relation 24 25 between ‘capital and work’ around from The switching between both interpreta- conveyer belts, a far cry from any produ- Workers and workerists it’s orthodox representation: the political tions characterised operaismo from the cer or skilled worker’s pride. class composition is a historical given, that beginning. When Sergio Bologna fi rst used the In the last few years lots of books have capital has to confront. “The class relation As a result of Tronti’s distillation of term in 1967 in a seminar in Padua, he come out in Italy, going over the history comes before the capital relation”. Mea- theory (e.g. class struggle as the main wanted to use it to argue against reacti- of the 60s and 70s. A few are dedicated to ning that the working class precedes the driving force of capitalist development), vated concepts of Leninist organisation the ‘workerists’, who have given personal development of capital. And machinery is his conclusions became partly arbitrary, and show that the class composition of interviews for the fi rst time and told their the capitalist answer. So worker struggle turning the biggest defeats into victories the mass worker has long superseded this version of history. Hardly any of these is seen as the aggressive force and not as a (for example seeing passivity as the work- notion. (The fi rst mass workers’ struggle books (with the exception of the one by reaction to the exploitation suffered. This ers’ refusal to struggle). ‘Operaismo as took place in the 1930s in the USA). In La Nazione journalist Aldo Grandi!) had made Tronti’s text immensely attractive. It philosophy’ is not much good for analy- the hot autumn of 1969 this mass worker bothered to also interview the workers worked like a drug on the young militants sis – even less so in defensive situations. theory was confi rmed in Italy. who were the actual protagonists of this of the 60s and 70s, because it implied the However, there is also a methodological Based on this special fi gure, a new phi- cycle of struggles. For a few years, during possibility (and feasibility!) of the revolu- problem: if capital‘s every action is under- losophy of history was created. However, the ‘workers’ inquiries’ in the 60s and in tion. stood as a reaction to class struggle, then, the acceptance of this new idea in turn the years 1968-1973, there was a collabo- Class composition meant the crystallisa- implicitly, the inner connection between forced any further inquiry work into a ration between the left intellectuals sear- tion of behaviour, needs and the tradition class and capital must be abandoned. To cage or rigid political framework. New ching for the revolutionary subject and of struggle. It was a material basis that re- see the capital relation as a power relation formulations emerged such as ‘the law the workers in revolt, from which both placed the concept of ‘class consciousness’ throws the law of value overboard and of the movement of the working class’ sides profi ted: the workers found new that would have to be brought in from ultimately divides economics and politics or ‘a particular technical composition of instruments for changing the world, the outside of the class. Class composition again. Here we can see the foundations labour force necessarily corresponds to intellectuals gained new insights. After contained both the technical structure of being laid for the ontological derivation a typical system of social practice. It has this collaboration came to an end, the fi rst the class and how it consolidated them- of the concept of Multitude, as Negri lays to correspond to a particular political ex- group were still workers and the second selves (politically) in its struggles. But the them out in Empire. pression…’. The continuation was then still academics. In Italy hardly any of these process by which the labour force turns to form an organisation that was sup- comrades went into the factories themsel- into the working class, remains contra- The central subject in the struggles in the posed to unify this working class – which ves, whereas in Germany for example they dictory in Tronti’s writing: at times he factory in the 60s and 70s was the ‘mass was diametrically opposed to the original sometimes did. " conceived of it as an almost mechanical worker’: the unskilled worker, who had to thinking behind the workers’ inquiries. process, in other places he voluntaristical- perform the same hand movements over ly constructs a new political composition. and over again in the assembly halls and 26 27 The organised autonomy of the working class The refusal of work on the other hand those from the terti- and Leninism ary sector such as local administration or hospitals. The health workers in the cli- The history of Potere Operaio (workers power) ‘Cominciamo a dire Lenin’ [Let’s start nics were an organisational focal point of saying Lenin], began an editorial by Fran- Potere Operaio. The infl ux via the student co Piperno in 1969. This replaced the movement changed the composition even slogan ‘every economic struggle is also a more and thereby the political bias of the Potere Operaio [Workers’ Power] was hours weeks, with 48 paid hours; gua- political struggle’. Now it was all about group. initially the name of a few local groups, ranteed minimum wage; equality for all building up the organisation in order to The cultural difference between the who related to the working class inde- workers; against privilege and against pro- reach the economic aim. According to workers’ groups and the groups with more pendently of the union. Their theoreti- duction bonuses. In the same year the fi rst Negri, Leninism was the price to be paid students and academics in Florence and cal point of reference initially came from Congress of Potere Operaio Veneto-Emili- for the political new composition of the Rome was not free of tension. the newspaper Classe Operaia [Working ano, attended by worker-activists, took Italian proletariat. ‘Politics’ now meant While the comrades from the latter Class], which was founded in 1963 by place in Mestre. Lenin. groups used their time as a group to also the interventionist tendency within the The national organisation Potere Opera- While for the rival organisation Lot- go out together or go on holiday and had Quaderni Rossi newspaper. Going beyond io emerged in 1969 from the connections ta Continua everything started from the lots of time for discussions, in Veneto the their own inquiry work, they aimed their of local groups in Genoa, Milan, Turin spontaneity of the work ers struggles, Pote- work in the factory claimed a good part of publications directly to the workers. The and the Veneto. These groups had made re Operaio emphasised the aspect of orga- the time, as did the assemblies after work, editorial group in the Veneto reshaped it- their relation to the working class and the nisation. The political programme spoke distributing leafl ets etc. The time for na- self around Toni Negri, who was then a interventions in the factories as their focal of a direct transition to communism from tional or regional meetings was pretty lecturer at Padua University. point. Shortly before this, in Turin, the the extension of the struggles to insurrec- tight. In 1967 the last issue of Classe Operaia organisation Lotta Continua was formed tion and organised mass insurgency. At its Porto Marghera was ‘the’ concentrati- was published, and shortly after this Potere from a tendency of worker and student height, about 10,000 activists were invol- on of workers, where Potere Operaio really Operaio – giornale politico degli operai di assemblies, who had agitated at Fiat du- ved in Potere Operaio (to a greater or lesser had an infl uence, but politically the com- Porto Marghera started up and was pu- ring the whole Hot Autumn. Up to this extent). rades from Porto Marghera were some- blished until 1969. The themes of the point, ‘La Lotta Continua’ [the struggle The regional groups also represented what on the sidelines of the Organisa tion. newspaper were: more money; less work; is still on] had appeared as a slogan on the different social compositions: you At the Potere Operaio congress in Florence against piece work; against the intensifi ca- all the leafl ets. In 1969 the fi rst national had the industrial north with its workers in January 1970, it came to a confrontati- tion of work; against endangering health; newspaper Potere Operaio ap peared. groups, then Rome with on the one hand on about spontaneity and Leninism. Finzi against redundancies and short-work; 40 proletarian/sub-proletarian groups and from the Porto Marghera Workers‘ Committee 28 29 took up the follow ing position: what the der to spur on the unity of the vanguard. Marghera there was a joint intervention in … and break-up workers do, i.e. hold assemblies in the It was not deemed necessary to report on the factories from February to April 1971 The organisational conference in Rosalina factory, write leafl ets etc, is actually spon- the struggles of yesterday, but rather to with the slogans: “employ more people in June 1973 ended without either a so- taneous organising. The workers’ commit- offer guidance today on the struggles of and give a 36 hour week to everyone”, lution or a new statute. The local groups tee leads and educates the working class. tomorrow. “introduce a fi fth shift”, “wage increases transformed into the Organised Autono- Revolutionary organising develops within A joint workers’ conference in January in inverse proportion to qualifi cations”, my. During the youth movement in 1977 the working class, starting from material 1971 in Milan: 76 workers’ groups from “no piecework or work intensifi cation”, there was an infl ux of a whole new genera- needs. The workers’ co-or dination is not Il Manifesto and 68 groups from Potere “no profi t-dependent bonus payments”. tion of activists. an information service about struggles, Operaio took part. From the content of After the dissolution of Potere Ope- but a political decision making body, a their speeches, it seemed the two groups Split … raio, the ‘Negri-ists’ met in the summer co-or dination of the workers avant-garde. had an abyss between them. Potere Ope- At the congress in the EUR district of of 1973 in Padua. They wanted to hold The organisation is merely an instrument raio delegates emphasised that it was all Rome in September 1971, Potere Operaio on to the thread of factory struggles. Finzi for a direct struggle for concrete aims. about tearing away the mask of the state, actually split around the question: keep and Sbrogiò represented the Autonomous It came to a political division between to make visible the violence that ensured organising the mass workers, or anticipate Assembly. Their attitude was every more on one hand those who wanted to con- its domination over the working class. capitalist development in the terrain of rigid: only the shop-fl oor workers were al- tinue the ‘workerist’ practice of rank and In the light of the tremendous levels of the ‘socialised worker’ (operaio sociale). lowed to repres ent them to the outside, fi le work in the factories. And on the struggle the party now had to organise In the end, the following position won no ‘external’ members. other hand those who, after the Hot Au- and the uprising had to be prepared. out: to come out of the factories, to push tumn of 1969 ended due to the new coll- Il Manifesto was set on long and drawn the organising into the ‘terrain’. To pre- `Mass militancy‘ or armed struggle ective contract, felt that the time was right out guerrilla tactics, putting forward de- pare for the insurrection. Many people After 1969 all the radical left organisa- to put all their energy into building up an mands for the attainment of the abolition did not agree with this and left the or- tions had built up groups of armed ‘stew- organisation aimed at political overthrow. of piece work, better working hours and a ganisation. ards’, who initially safeguarded leafl eting better work environment. To go beyond The drive to build up a party, and actions in front of factories, schools etc. New alliances unionism requires autonomy and a unifi ed ever more national congresses, no longer and protected against fascist attacks. September 1970: attempted fusion into organism of the working class: the politi- helped the workers in Porto Marghera. After the dissolution of the organisati- political committees with the group called cal com mittee as a preliminary form of a Instead, they built up a network of auto- ons, these ‘military wings’ made themsel- Il Manifesto, which controlled the il ma- party and as a motor for the emergence of nomous workers‘ groups in Milan, Rome ves independent. One part founded the nifesto newspaper, which Potere Operaio an unifi ed organ of the working class. and Naples and brought out a joint news- group Prima Linea; the leadership of the would have liked to turn into the daily While the national leadership had al- paper. stewards of Potere Operaio in Rome joined paper of the political committees, in or- ready given up on co-operation, in Porto the Red Brigades. " 30 31 “The split and break-up of Potere Operaio happened on the basis of the antagonism The history of the workers‘ committee of three positions: of Porto Marghera a) The project to build up a new party b) Glorifi cation of the spontaneity of the socialised worker and organisation of the vanguards. Talk by Italo Sbrogiò c) The search for a dialectical relation between new subjects and historical orga- Given at the presentation of the `Augusto Finzi‘ workers‘ archive, nisations. Marghera, 9 June 2006 Positions a) and b) shared the belief that the time was ripe for the beginning of the revolutionary process, but they differed fundamentally in their idea of organisation; the fi rst had a late-Leninist idea, while the second wanted to connect with the mass vanguard. Position c) thought that both of these positions were totally unrealistic and presumptuous. Now that the phase of the political groups was coming to an end, it was seen as more useful to analyse the new social dimensions of the confl icts from within, and thereby to look at how the capitalist response to the crisis creates cont- radictions within class composition. This position wanted to try to open channels of communication, primarily with the unions, who had proven themselves to be more open to the new reality than the parties were.”

(Bianchini/Pergola, foreword to the reprint of `Potere Operaio – giornale politico degli operai di Porto Marghera´, 1967-69), Padua 1980.

32 33 In 1952 the fi rst chemicals factory was men and the spying by the factory secu- the works council elections. The workers 1968: 5000 Lire for everyone set up in Porto Marghera, the chlorinated rity; if you were denounced by them for already saw us as members of Potere soda department, which was to become whatever reason you would be punished Operaio and we were re-elected with a This phase gave birth to the fi rst workers‘ the motor of growth for an integrated pro- immediately. The attitude of the company majority. We distributed the fi rst political committee. When the production bonus duction cycle with other parts such as; tet- was very varied, ranging from sackings to newspaper by Potere Operaio in the fact- was up for renegotiation in June 1968, rachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, vinyl merciless pa ternalism. This was supposed ory in March 1967 and the second one we demanded 5000 Lire for everyone. chloride (from which polyvinyl chloride, to break the workers‘ unity, which despite in May, with Francesco Tolin as offi cially The workers understood our egalitarian PVC, is made by a process of polymeri- all this actually was making progress. responsible. demands and involved themselves in a sation). The content of these two fi rst issues was hard struggle which enforced the princi- The workers came from the countryside New Contacts based on reports which workers‘ autono- ple and managed to squeeze out 1000 and therefore had mostly received their my vanguards had collected from across Lire for everyone. The rest would also be skills from self-education, in contrast to the In 1964 the fi rst so-called intellectuals ap- the whole of Italy. paid out equally, but remained tied to the company management, many of whom proached us. I met Toni Negri and Guido In Porto Marghera (Petrolchimico) the- development of productivity. In order to came from the Fascist tradition. Bianchini who had already made contact fi rst repression occurred. Comrade Bruno achieve this we had held several demos Amongst the workers there were also with a communist worker in Vetrocoke by Massa was for cibly transferred to Bussi in and oc cupied the train station in Mestre. PCI members. Employed with the ap- this time, comrade Pistolato, who was the Abruzzo [a region in Central Italy]. Au- proval and guarantee of the priests, the chairman of a circle which saw itself as a gusto Finzi was internally trans ferred sev- The Hot Autumn communists were diligent workers, the PCI people‘s university. eral times. This cruel attack only made us had taught them that a good worker = a In the time which followed I also met stronger. I too was banished to a punitive The so-called hot autumn brought workers good communist. Massimo Cacciari, Francesco dal Co and de partment in order to prevent me from and students closer together; we partici- We worked with our heads down, but other comrades. having daily contact with workmates. pated in common discussion groups and with a huge will to rebel against all the At these meetings we learned to do Once of our fi rst goals was to turn took to the streets together. In January harassment that we endured on a daily politics by participating in the debates, the struggles for our material needs into 1969 we agitated all across Italy for the basis. everyone at the same level. mass struggles. The group of workers who standardisation of the wage agreement. In 1958 there was no CGIL there. It From the PCI and its centralised politics shared our goals organisationally and in We also suggested rank and fi le commit- was fi rst created when some communist we were used to obeying orders and this content led up to our fi rst factory congress tees in all the factories with the aim of a workers stood for election for the works kind of politics which brought us into a in September 1967 in the suburbs of Mes- guaranteed minimum wage of 120,000 council, and won a majority. These com- vanguard role was new for us. tre. We argued for the strategy that Potere Lire (at the time the minimum wage was rades then formed Potere Operaio. They Operaio should intervene in all the facto- 55,000 Lire) a 40 hour week with 48 were joined by comrades from the white- Our fi rst leafl et ries. As members of the works council, we hours paid, holiday and health insurance collar departments. argued for the equality of blue and white at equal levels for everyone. Working in the Petrolchimico was really In 1967 the fi rst leafl et by Potere Operaio collar workers. In June 1969, as the workers‘ commit- hard, what with the assaults by the fore- appeared in Porto Marghera. It was about tee in Porto Marghera (a few of us were

34 35 CGIL-members), we fought against the covers holiday pay, Christmas bonuses Exclusion from the union union caving in and organised struggles and the like. Another reason then, to fi ght in production; not the pinpoint strikes that together for 1000 Lire a day, for a 40 Bit by bit the Potere Operaio factory group the union was proposing in order to af- hour week, for a 36 hour week for shift was expelled from the CGIL. We were ac- fect production as little as possible. We workers, for equal holiday time, equal cused of not toeing the line. We answered directed the workers‘ attention to the health insurance and equal pensions for that they were right, we were not in line, `wage zones‘ [in the old wage agreement all, blue and white collar workers. because we had always fought against the different wage levels were set for differ- line of capitulation. More and more work- ent regions of Italy] and to the possibility Between May and June 1969 the CGIL ers followed our line: If a worker from the of converting the production bonuses to a held its seventh regional congress. In the CV5 department (PVC production) was 14th month wage for everyone. We also debates delegates showed concern about sacked due to false allegations, the union focused on exposing Montedison‘s health the re-election of the Potere Operaio tried to get him back into the factory, but risks policies; the company only declared repre sentatives in the Petrolchimico. In his without success. The worker then turned dex-based extra payment for health-dama- seven departments as health risks — an speech, the regional secretary of the met- to us at Potere Operaio and asked us for ging work [meaning that the more health adjustment to the lowest standard when alworkers‘ union indicated that the union help. We then organised a picket line at damaging the work, the more money you Edison and Montecatini merged and cre- did not really play the leading role: `In 6 a.m. without much advance notice and get]. In the assemblies, the Petrolchimico ated Montedison. several cases we were not prepared for blocked the factory until the worker was Workers´ Committee and other groups ut- In the factory, we did not present oursel- the pressure of the workers with their spon- reinstated. terly refused these demands. At that time, ves as a fourth union, but rather as an taneous organisational forms‘. In August 1969 the union ordered the the Petrolchimico Workers´ Committee, autonomous organisation with the slogan dissolution of the works council and orga- the Rank-and-fi le Committee Montedison `less work, more wages‘. nised re-elections. We decided not to par- Ferrara and the Workers‘ Students‘ Com- In July 1969, as the workers‘ committee ticipate. When the votes were counted, mittee Montedison Mantua joined forces of Porto Marghera, we spoke about focus- over 50 percent of the ballot slips were and fought for common aims: equal wage sing our struggles on the abolition of the blank. increases for all, nobody must earn less sub-contractors, whose employees worked November 1969. The wage demand than 120,000 Lire per month, a 40 hour- with shitty conditions and with many daily by the chemical workers‘ union was piti- week for those on normal shifts, a 36 work accidents, because they were seen ful: 12,000 Lire more per month, a perio- hour-week for those doing shift work. We as second-class workers. All workers are dic increase of seniority bonuses between wanted everything and we wanted it right ex ploited, but those employed by the sub- 3 and 5 per cent, increase of the minimum away. Because of unemployment, techno- contractors are doubly exploited if they bonus from 2 per cent to 5 per cent, a 40 logical development and health damage, work 10 to 12 hours a day and get paid hour week spread over fi ve days and a and because the factory was more or less only 130 to 140 hours per month at a rate minimum of 15 days holiday a year. In like a prison, we wanted to spend as little of 280 or 300 Lire per hour, which also addition to that the union demanded an in- time as possible inside.

36 37 The centrality of the wage right away. Forms of struggle which dis- have to use it. Our slogan was: `United Potere Operaio got elected anyway, even rupt production as severely as possible with the struggle at Fiat we will bring the into the board of the factory council, be- This is why the wage became the central and which force the bosses to their knees: bosses to their knees‘. cause the workers wanted it that way. This issue. If the wage is too low, shorter work- one day we walked out, the next day we had been very diffi cult to achieve against ing hours will not be of much use. If we didn‘t. The union of councils heavy resistance by the union. Many of lack money we will always be forced to In late 1969 the employees of Châtil- us perceived these new representative do overtime and the reduction of working lon in Porto Marghera announced their The reformism of the PCI developed at high institutions as another challenge, similar time will be no more than a bluff. There- demands for the collective contract, which speed; the CGIL was the party‘s transmis- to the process of our emergence from the fore we also demanded equal holidays, already sound familiar: from working time sion belt in its attempt to regain the upper Commissioni interne. equal health insurance and equal wage reduction to equal wage increases for all. hand over the organising process of the increases according to seniority for blue The bosses answered with open threats. workers. The Commissioni interne were Uniting factory struggles and collar and white collar workers, starting We immediately distributed a leafl et in the actually outdated, so a new union repre- social struggles Petrol chimico saying that it is in our own sentation was established in the factories, interest to join the Châtillon workers with based on a fake representative democ- Let‘s talk about the social struggles. We effective forms of struggle, meaning the racy. The fi rst department delegates were called for the auto-reduction of public stop-and-go strikes that we were already elected directly from the shop-fl oor level transport fares, of rent, gas, electricity familiar with. and it was possible to vote for non-union and food prices. We managed to achieve The struggle became harder and har- members. This was supposed to make all that in the Petrolchimico and we even der and we reduced the emergency staff them credible to us. We have to admit that managed to drag the union along. The responsible for the safety of the plant from with the factory councils they partly suc- practice of self-reduction then spread in 125 to 32, which meant the actual stop- ceeded. the neighbourhoods including the city of ping of production instead of maintaining In view of this, we, the vanguard, put Venice. People lowered rents, occupied a minimum production. The political im- our back into it and said that the inter- empty houses, paid less for their food. We pact of Potere Operaio in the Petrolchi- vention inside the factories would have to organised all this by establishing local mico became more and more signifi cant be carried to the outside, to the ‚social‘, committees in the various parts of town. and more and more organised. On 10 as well, broaching the issue of the rise of We even managed to organise a shop- October 1969 Fiat in Turin was occupied living costs. Some of us did not agree with ping strike which forced some supermar- by the workers and there was internal putting the intervention inside the factory kets (Ca d‘Oro, Coop, Pam) to cut prices fi ghting during the hunt for scabs. As Pote- and its demands and representation in for basic food (you would save about re Operaio, we hailed the occupation: we second place. We had a general debate 1,000 Lire out of 8,000). The committees must not suffer any wage cuts as a result and came to the conclusion that the facto- for self-reduction (Comitati di autoriduzi- of traditional strikes; we have the power ry councils were not what they had been one) spread as far as Chioggia, where to force the bosses to their knees, we just proposed to be. Some comrades from about 2,500 families reduced their bills.

38 39 In the province of Venice in total about rules of this society. We fought against the scharge of gas, it decided that from now 15,000 families took part. health hazards by fi ghting for having to on all workers in Porto Marghera had to The committee organised a big self-re- work less, for not having to die of poison- wear gas masks. This decision sparked duction demonstration, which started from ing through work. It damages your health great debates. The union tried to appear the bridge in Mestre, heading towards the to get up every morning to go to work, more left-wing than us and pointed out Piazza Ferretto, where we started a huge to follow the rhythm and movements of that this measure would have to include fi re by burning all the gas and electricity production, to work shifts, to bring home not only the factories in Porto Marghera, bills which we had reduced. After four a wage which forces you to go back to but also those in the adjoining areas. months of nationwide protests the govern- the factory the next day... all this damages They really made a joke of themselves: ment and union signed an agreement your health. in the midst of the strike we organised a which cut the price of electricity. Those Strikes kicked off against health da- crucifi xion on the square in front of gate and even force the union to support them. involved in the committee said that such a mage, tough ones as well. The workers 3 of the Petrolchimico. We erected a four During the demos we were able to make strong bond between the factory and the surpassed the absent union, which was metre high cross, a puppet wearing a gas out the few workers who tried to chicken neighbourhood had never existed before. contented with the mere fact that now mask was attached to it, symbolising Jesus out. Later on in the canteen we ousted every worker had a health pass. Not only Christ. A sign said: `Montedison lets you these workers by banging our plates, Factory work makes you sick! Potere Operaio, but also Lotta Continua die a second time.‘ something which I think is psy chologically and other groups acted against the apa- We demanded that the company fi nd diffi cult to bear. In order not to suffer this Let‘s talk about the 1970s. The health thy of the union, and against the apathy out the reason for the health damage and treatment a lot of potential scabs joined damage in the factory and in everyday of the left-wing parties. The institutions eliminate it by closing the plant and the the strike. life became worse and worse, unbear- were nearly absent. Our slogan was: clo- department while continuing to pay wa- able, I‘d say. The unions remained silent sure of the factory, refurbishment of the ges to the affected workers, re-opening Co-operation with il manifesto about what to do about it. Accidents and plant, and re-opening while Montedison the plant afterwards. In 1970 and 1971, in Porto Marghera acute poisoning happened every day. Po- continued to pay the wages. The strugg- The strike during the collective agree- il manifesto and Potere Operaio formed tere Operaio was aware of the problem les got `bloody‘, until nearly the whole ment negotiations also included demos the Political Com mittee, which survived and picked up the protest of the workers. factory came to a standstill, includ ing the inside the factory, copying the demos at for only a few months. We let people We said that money cannot compensate chemical facilities which Montedison had Fiat Mirafi ori, which for us in Marghera know about it through some leafl ets and for health damage. Workers don‘t go to always claimed could not be stopped wit- were legendary. It was a form of struggle a congress, which I think took place in the work in the factory in order to do inquir- hout causing their destruction. which expressed the unity of the workers. department of architecture of the univer- ies, but because they are forced to. Work At this point we were summoned by the When they were motivated and angry, the sity in Venice. The stuff that was spoken isn‘t a way of life, but the necessity to sell health and safety authorities. After the au- in ternal demos were a success, otherwise about during the congress was more up oneself in order to be able to live. And it thority had listened to all parties and un- it was better to forget about them. As long our street. I think il manifesto was looking is this very struggle against work, against derstood that dozens of poisoned workers as the committee had a network inside the for allies to help them get their daily news- having to sell oneself, which attacks all the had to be sent to hospital due to daily di- factory we could organise these demos paper going in the Veneto. In Mar ghera, 40 41 they were formed by a few comrades who added tax IVA, replacing the old sales tax wage categories and for automatic pro- blies at the Petrolchimico and at Châtil- had left the PCI, including only a very few IGE and leading to a big price hike. Then motion. Against the health hazards there lon. Carried by this wave of success and work ers. We were closer to Lotta Continua there was the reform of the health system was a precise demand and a mass strug- led by the will to organise independently, than to Il manifesto. which turned company doctors and judg- gle: closure of dangerous departments the Assemblea Autonoma di Marghera The reform of the union es into combatants against absenteeism. – refurbishment and continued payment (Autonomous Assembly of Porto Marghe- We perceived these reforms as an at- of wages — with subsequent re-opening. ra) was established. The core was made During the early 1970s the politics of the tempt to pull wool over the workers‘ eyes. On an individual level we made use of up of workers from the committee, from union was about the ‚structural reforms‘. We wanted to build an alternative to the absenteeism. Against the price in creases Lotta Continua, workers from the Petrol- After the tax reform the wage tax was de- political line of the union, regarding the we proposed reappropriation [collective chimico and Châtillon who had left the ducted directly from the workers‘ wage; forms of struggle as much as the aims. shoplifting: often referred to as la spesa union, and metal workers from Ammi and the employer became an auxiliary of the Our alternatives were demands for ma- proletaria – `proletarian shopping‘], the Dimm. The Assemblea was formed based state. The reform introduced the value- jor wage increases, for the reduction of reduction of housing rents and electricity on the historic aims of the Committee: re- bills. We also proposed harder forms of duction of the working week to 36 hours struggle, in the factory: strikes that would at equal wages, because new machines actually stop production. in crease the power of dead labour over the workers; wage categories based on A network of seniority rather than formal skills, because shop-fl oor collectives the skills which the bosses demand can be obtained after few years in the facto- In 1972 we intensifi ed contact with other ry; refusal to work in departments which shop-fl oor based groups which were not are hazardous for our health as the most tied to political organisations or which direct way to avoid the damaging con- were sick of being their `mass organisa- sequences; complete equality between tion‘. These groups were based in Milan blue and white-collar workers in order to (at Alfa, Pirelli and Siemens), in Rome (the be able to fi ght together effectively. The polyclinic, ENEL), in Naples (Uscri) and other central thread of the intervention in other factories. Together we published was the intention of carrying our topics a few issues of the magazine Il Bollettino from the factory to the neighbourhoods: degli organismi autonomi operai (Bulletin prices, rent, electricity, the auto-reduction of autonomous workers‘ organisations). of bills as a re-appropriation of the wage. In late 1972, the committee managed The prime intention was bottom-up organ- to topple the collective agreement for the ising, outside of the union. The Assemb- chemical industry in the company assem- lea Autonoma aimed at establishing the

42 43 department commit tees as capillary orga- formed by those people who, in the mate- combine the economical and political. On Between the ‚historic compromise‘ and nisms inside the factory. We criticised the rial sense, fought the battles in the schools those levels we contributed all we could. `the politics of sacrifi ce‘, the PCI under political groups, including Potere Opera- and factories – not by those who only in- On the other levels, though, we either just Berlinguer had lost its track completely. io, for ‚fl eeing forward‘. structed them. We wanted to break with went along with things, remained passive, The union, with its leaders Lama, Carniti, the tendency of delegation where the in- or disagreed outright. and Benvenuto, became the transmission Against ‚fl eeing forward‘ dependent vanguard creates facts and the During those years living costs someti- belt for a responsible politics in the face group then fi ghts over the leadership. mes increased by about 15 to 16 per cent of the severe economical crisis. Inside the In May 1973 the congress of Rosolina a year, although infl ation compensation factories they enforced the EUR [part of took place. By then the different tenden- Up to 1974 the workers‘ committee and partly cushioned the impact. The bosses Rome where the union congress had tak- cies and local branches of Potere Operaio later the Assemblea Autonoma used the claimed that the infl ation was itself caused en place] politics of sacrifi ce by signing had only little in common. We from Mar- magazines Potere Operaio del Lunedì by infl ation compensation, and many strangling agreements intended to curb ghera went to the congress determined and, later on, Rosso. We used them in reformists (political parties and others) wage costs and increase productivity. to speak for our own practice, that is, order to substantiate and generalise our shared this position. Back then compensa- The sellout of the workers got worse and to point out all the factory collectives own analyses and to communicate with tion for infl ation was calculated based on worse; the division between ‚permanent‘ which were constantly being organised other groups. We then started to publish the wage category, so that those who ear- and ‚casual‘ workers was bearing fruit. outside of the political groups and had a little zine of about 30 pages called ned little also received little compensati- We didn‘t manage to organise struggles demands beyond those of the union and Lavoro Zero (Zero Work). We wrote, on. They also told us the fairytale that ‚you with a promising political perspective any which wanted to organise and coordinate printed and distributed it ourselves. It was must not demand higher wages, because longer. themselves just like we did. There was no our response to various needs and was the infl ation will swallow them anyway‘. In late 1976 the law to cool down com- space for the Party of insurrection and for supposed to serve various goals, fi rst of We thought we should intervene outside pensation of infl ation passed. In January escapist moves towards a militarization of all organising. We wanted to create a of the factories as well in order to make 1977 the employers‘ association and uni- the confl ict. We thought that it was correct reference point and a certain unifi cation our point of view heard. ons signed an agreement which stipulated to speak of the socialized worker instead amongst the struggles in the depart ments Some female comrades and women amongst other things: of the mass worker, but we completely which became very frequent during this from the proletarian areas of Mestre tried - abolition of automatic compensation for disagreed when it came to the question stage and were organised by us. A fac- to combine this struggle with the demand infl ation, of how to organise the socialized worker tory newspa per capable of expressing of a wage for housework. - abolition of seven annual holidays, and ourselves. At that time, we were ut- and combining the interest of all work- During the following years the ‚commit- - the right to relocate workers inside the terly rigid. Only people who worked in a ers, publishing not only leafl ets from the tee for struggle against price increases‘ company if required by shift-schedule and factory themselves, no ‚externals‘, were struggle but also a general analysis of organised the auto-reduction of rent and overtime, allowed to speak for the Autonomous the situation. For us this level of political occupied houses. That was us! - measures against absenteeism. Assembly. We wanted to go back to the practice was already the `Party‘: from the Our end In addition there was stepped-up state re- basics and return to the times when the struggle in the department towards a gen- pression [the Cossiga law allowed for nine vanguard of an organisation would be eral analysis of the situation, in order to In 1976 the political climate was terrible. years of pre-trial confi nement], Calogero‘s 44 45 theorem, the collaboration of the PCI, some months later when the Red Brigades massacres organised by the state ... killed the boss of the anti-terrorism depart- ment in Venice. The media continued their Failure On Saturday the 7th of April 1979 Pad- public trial against us.: ControLavoro, ua‘s public prosecutor Calogero attacked Lavoro Zero and the COM2 publishing In the early 1970s an important chap- in a blitz-like action: dozens of people in cooperative were accused of being the ter in the history of class movement was Milan, Padua and Rome got arrested, all driving force behind the murders, and closed; all processes of cent ralisation former members of Potere Op eraio and the arrested comrades were portrayed as and elaboration of a party form which now militants of the Organised Workers‘ terrorists. were adequate to the quality of the Autonomy. On Monday the 9th of April, The circle closed. We got crushed bet- movement (not just those initiated by the headline of ControLavoro read: ‚The ween the armed groups and state repres- Potop) failed. It ought to be stressed election campaign has started‘, the elec- sion. There was no space for the autono- that in 1968/69 all these attempts to tions were meant to be held in May. The mous struggle of the working class any make a revolutionary tension last were debates evolving around the arrests dealt more. backed by a majority and had mass with the question of how we should re act. Nevertheless there could be an extra- character. Their failure appears as a We decided to take part in the informa- ordinary fi nale for a story which had be- loss of social representation of the ex- tion campaign concerning the 7th of April gun years earlier. Des pite all individual tra-parliamentary left, as its diaspora: by establishing one of the many 7th of and collective attempts to edge them out but it is also a backwardness of the April committees, and to carry on with our of the historical picture, the mass work- entire left in relation to the processes of political work. ers — de-skilled, rootless, not respected, de-composition of the class driven by On the 21st of December 1979 the responsible for having disorientated the capitalist restructuring on a world sca- next wave of repression took place, with left-wing parties and their political models le and in the developed centres. The arrests in Milan, Rome, Padua and Ve- – constituted the driving force behind the offi cial workers‘ movement is incapab- nice. This time we were directly affected, intertwining of a great cycle of struggle le of consolidating its reform project as Augusto Finzi and other comrades got ar- for a different life in the factories and in a response to capital‘s initiative. rested. On the 24th of January the third society. " blitz happened, with arrests in Milan, Bianchini/Pergola, Preface to the reprint Novara, Como, Genoa and Venice, our of Potere Operaio – Giornale Politico de- comrade Gianni Sbrogiò amongst them. gli operai di Porto Marghera 1967-69, On the 29th of January the Red Brigades Padua 1980 killed the vice-director of the Petrolchimico and the entire press linked our arrests with this murder. The same equation was made

46 47 ‚The workers should take things into their own hands‘ The establishment of factory councils was the factory coun cil, which had been for- a need of the rank-and-fi le and became med as a democratic possibility to advance a need of the leadership which in some the workers‘ rank-and-fi le needs, became Excerpt from an interview with Gianni Sbrogiò about politics of way or the other had to modify the or- more and more an instrument of the uni- representation and the attempt to implement the refusal of work ganised level of workers‘ struggles. Potere on apparatus. Some council members had inside the factory. Operaio was completely opposed, our po- to be uni on members, which initially had sition was that the factory council was a not been the case. When the three union One of the most interesting bits in the in- these workers, who agreed on a minimum structure in the hands of the unions and federations agreed on a common deal an terview with Augusto Finzi deals with your of debates and demands, to take things functional for them. In Marghera intensi- even more restrictive phase begun and the effort to organ ise yourselves without a poli- into their own hands, from A to Z, from ve debates evolved around this issue. On structure became even more bureaucrat ic. tical layer ... the struggle to the drafting of demands. one hand we saw the establishment of the In the end all decisions were made by the This has always been our obsession. We factory council as an attempt to assimilate council board whose aims rarely differed managed to put this idea into practice by But you did not always agree on this sub- the factory struggles. On the other hand from the offi cial union line. organising the Assemblea Autonoma. We ject. Germano Mariti talks very positively we noticed that the workers used it and were always obsessed with refusing rep- about the de partment delegates and about therefore we accep ted this organism in Refusal of resentatives. We wanted the workers to the factory council. He perceives them both order to say what we had to say, despite health-damaging work refuse to hand over the responsibility to as a conquest of the workers. Augusto Finzi, the fact that we ourselves had no interest others, to the unions or the political Party. on the other hand, sees that the unions were in being inside the factory council. To put Why did it take such a long time in the Pe- We did not want to hand them over to a able to use these bodies to re gain control over it another way: we knew that once we got trolchimico for struggles against the health structure that was different from us. This the struggles. elected into the factory council (at Ammi damaging chemical production to erupt? At was our position, so our big political grief Yes, we had two hearts beating in our Germano got elected as a department de- which point did the workers refuse to accept has always been, whether as Potere Opera- chests. The factory councils were establis- legate and I got elected as a representative their fate? What kind of forms of struggle io, as the Porto Marghera workers‘ group hed in Italy in 1969, at the end of a big of the white-collar workers) everthing de- did they come up with? or as the Autonomous Assembly of Porto cycle of struggles. Politically they were pended on being organised outside of that We have to distinguish between the Marghera, that in the end the workers the institutional attempt of the unions to body, in order to carry the so-called poli- metal and the chemical industries. The would turn us into delegates. This has al- contain those struggles which developed tical line (which had been laid down ex- danger that the metal worker is subjected ways thrown us into crisis because we re- outside of their organisation. For many ternally), i.e. the choice of goals, into the to is much more visible and more imme- fused these politics of representa tion but workers who were organised in the uni- council which would then adopt them. diate: ranging from dust to noise. For the in the end the workers wanted to see us ons, the factory councils allowed them Our political goal was to organise the chemical worker the danger is much more in this position, as delegates. We wanted to debate with each other democratically. autonomy of the working class. In the end, insidious. Here the health hazards were 48 49 uncovered later, partly due to the fact that do is another. You are forced to work on ment. This struggle was the attempt to re duction of work pressure through the re- they had been kept secret. A metalworker a low wage in a health-damaging environ- put Potere Operaio‘s slogan into practice: duction of working hours. We chose very working in front of a furnace knew what ment, therefore the refusal of work means reduction of the working-time as an ex- hard forms of struggle together with the he had to fi ght against – noise, dirt, heat starting to change the very organisation pression of the refusal or work and of the workers who stopped stripping the catho- – and therefore it was possible to organise of work. struggle against health-damaging work. A des. The management had to switch off a struggle against it. Of course, the chemi- Within Potere Operaio we were often demand for the immediate improvement the electricity and the machines stopped cal workers knew something, but caught seen as the ‘right-wing’, because we talked of the qual ity of life. We thought that the producing zinc. If the management had between the low wage and the union about the refusal of work in a reformist, demand would go down best in those situ- not switched of the electricity more and which had addopted the bosses’ point of rather than a revolutionary way. Because ations where work was the most damaging more zinc would have accumulated and view they accepted the health hazard bo- we ‘took apart’ the refusal of work, becau- and hard. This was in the zinc electrolysis fi nally destroyed the facility. This is why nus. We were around during this phase. se we did not only talk about a struggle department, where sheer zinc is produced they were forced to stop the machines. This is why we said: no, this kind of work which was supposed to topple the system. by electrolysis from zinc oxide dissolved This went on for some days, I think at is unaccept able! And we tried to express We were seen as the ‘unionists’. Who in sulphuric acid. In this department it some point the production lay idle for ten the line of the refusal of work, which came knows, looking back from today’s pers- was very damp, there were electro-magne- days in a row. We achieved the rule that from Potere Operaio, this slogan, this pro- pective maybe we would have made good tic fi elds and sulphuric acid vapours. The the workers only had to strip the cathodes ject which we thought was indispensable. unionists if we had not chosen different zinc is produced in a system where cells for six hours without having to knock off The worker had to put himself into this paths, but in reality we often functioned fi lled with the solution are energised. The the anodes afterwards. contradiction, he had to say: we have to as the critical consciousness of the union. sheer zinc accumulates at the aluminium Previously they had had a break af- produce, but how, what and when? And We opened the eyes of the workers and cathodes. Every day, the workers had the ter six hours of work and then cleaned with these three questions we started the demonstrated that it was possible to orga- six-hour duty to strip the zinc off the ca- the anodes for another hour and a half, debate on the refusal of work. nise in ways different from the unions. thodes. Afterwards the anodes had to be which amounted to eight hours. After the No worker thought of us as idlers or of cleaned from encrustations, which took struggle they worked only six hours, then people who don’t want to work, because Direct reduction of working time another hour and a half. We organised a went to catch lunch in the canteen and we said: ‚We work even more than you do, medical check for the workers in these de- did not return back to work afterwards. we work inside the factory like you do, How did you enforce the 36 hours week? Is partments in order to show that the work The cleaning of the anodes was done by after the work we go to the as sembly for it true that the workers had to work only was damaging. It became clear that a lot of another group of workers which the em- three hours and after that we organise the six hours but could not go home afterwards, workers had developed problems affecting ployer had to hire for this purpose. We struggles. We work much more than you!‘ that they had to stay in the plant for another their mouths, noses, throats and ears be- fi nally put this down in a department The work which you are forced to do is two hours? cause they were exposed to sulphuric acid level agreement which offi cially did not one thing, the work which you choose to This was in the zinc electrolysis depart- and noise. We organised a struggle for the exist because the uni on did not support 50 51 the demand. But then the union decided APPENDIX to sign the contract after all and it be came offi cial. The union did not want to make the achievement public. We, in contrast, `Processo Petrolchimico‘ – tried to make it known by all means ima- The trial against Montedison and Enichem ginable. Until 1975 the workers sat in the can- teen and played cards, but they were not allowed to leave the factory. Therefore Gabriele Bortolozzo, born 1934 in Cam- overseas competitors to harm the Italian we organised a struggle for the right to palto close to Venice, was a chemical industry with his investigation. leave the factory. The form of struggle worker at the Porto Marghera Petrocl- Bortolozzo’s action received committed was to leave after lunch without punch- himico for 35 years. In the 70s he learned support from prosecutor Casson, a PCI ing out. The management posted letters of the cancer risk in PVC production member who had previously investigated of dismissal, justify ing it by the fact that and noticed that more and more of his the Gladio affair. When an announce- the workers had left their work place be- colleagues were dying of cancer. Soon ment was published in Venice’s two daily fore end of shift. At this point the uni on afterwards he started his investigation. newspapers asking all the sick and the be- had to intervene. In the end, the solu- In a survey conducted in the department reaved relatives to get in touch to report tion was that on bank holidays workers that polymerises MVC (monomerical vi- medical histories and working conditions, were allowed to leave one hour earlier, on nyl chloride) in autoclaves and so turns new evidence continued to come to light normal working days half an hour earlier. it into PVC, he counted 149 workers and 507 people joined the action. The employer had to hire new workers to dead and more than 500 suffering from Bortolozzo did not live to see the ope- clean the anodes. It remained that way as cancer. From 1985 onwards he worked ning of the trial. On the 12 September long as I worked in the plant, until I got with the magazine Medicina Democratica 1995 he died in a car accident. arrested in 1980. After that they somehow which published his report on the deaths restructured things. " in the petrochemical industry in 1994. The trial of 31 top managers, including Bortolozzo re peatedly took action to point the leadership of the Italian chemical in- to the deadly threat. He also fi led numer- dustry, began in March 1998. The charge: ous charges. ‘negligent causing of mass mortality’ and The chemical trade union FULC de- ‘being responsible for an envir onmental famed Bortolozzo as a spy paid for by catastrophe‘ by disposing of dioxin and 52 53 other poisonous chemical waste in the of November 2001. The court dismissed The production process of PVC The contamination of the lagoon waters and surroundings of Venice. all evidence which had been presented Only a few weeks after beginning of the and gave as grounds for the verdict that Monomeric vinyl chloride was polyme- During the trial, the excesses of the past trial the company bosses admitted parti- in the early 70s, when the deaths started, rised into PVC in autoclaves. At Porto came to the surface, the harmful produc- al responsibility and offered a 30 million the accused could not have known of the Marghera, obsolete working methods ex- tion process, clouds of toxic gas, illegal settlement to the bereaved relatives of the production’s deadly impact on the wor- posed the workers to cancer risk. Whoever toxic-waste dumps and transports, the MVC victims. Many accepted the settle- kers. Outraged, the joint plaintiffs fi led an had to clean MVC residues off the sealable discharge of toxic sewage into the lagoon, ment, as they did not want to wait their appeal together with prosecutor Casson. air-and-steam-tight production vats and the contamination of the ground water. whole lives for payouts, as in the cases of then fi ll the MVC into bags would feel 500,000 tons of a poisonous cocktail of Vajont and Seveso. Apart from the Italian The second trial commenced in the win- ‚as though walking on clouds‘ for several dioxin, lead, mer cury, and arsenic have state, the local authorities, trade unions ter of 2003/04, ending on December days afterwards. On some days the con- destroyed one of the most beautiful la- and associations like the democratic phy- 15th with a ruling acquitting the accused centration of chlorine gas was so high that goons in Europe. 80 million cubic metres sicians only 15 people continued to pur- of the main points of the prosecution. A the workers, who already had a sweet taste of industrial waste, equivalent to twice sue their claim, amongst them Gabriele few were convicted to a sentence of one in their mouths from the gas, could only the capacity of the lagoon, was simply Bor tolozzo‘s sons. and a half years on probation. break the windows of the department. dumped into the sea. Another fi ve million In the address by the counsel, the pro- In the civil proceedings a few workers Despite this, no money was invested in cubic metres of waste was dumped on the secutor found all of the 28 accused con- managed to receive compensations of va- less dangerous equip ment, and there was land. When toxic dumps were discove- victable of several homicides through rious amounts. " even an instruction to maintain the old, red on the factory premises twelve years negligence and of an outrage against the decrepit machines ‚as little as possible‘, so ago, the company proceeded to limit the environment. Casson demanded 12 years as not to disturb production. damage by simply levelling a dump and All facts about the trials: imprisonment for each of Eugenio Cefi s, http://www.petrolchimico.it/ The individual chemical companies covering it with ash. Subsequently a he- former president of ENI and Montedison, arranged amongst themselves to hush up licopter airfi eld for then-manager Raul Alberto Grandi, former CEO of Monte- the MVC risk. The or ganisation of work Gardini was built on top of it. " There is a documentary feature dison and vice president of Montefi bre, about Bortolozzo‘s struggle against must not be challenged. Thus the affec- and professor Emilio Barta lini, head of Montedison: ted workers were diagnosed wrongly with Montedison‘s central health service. He contagious diseases and left in the dark demanded 185 years imprisonment in to- Porto Marghera – about the danger inherent in the objects tal for all of the accused. un inganno letale they were working with. Numerous tu- Information about the lagoon: Against all expectations, the accused (Porto Marghera - a deadly deceit) mourous affl ictions and deaths were the http://www.salve.it/uk/eco/default.htm were acquitted by the court on the 2nd consequence. 54 55 The EU parliament is currently (Novem- The dioxin cloud over Seveso The new chemicals industry ber 2006) debating a stricter standard for Saturday, 10th of July 1976, Seveso, on the outskirts of Milan. The chemical factory directive and the the chemicals in dustry, because the risks of Icmesa with 153 em ployees is a subsidiary company of the Swiss chemical compa- many of the 30 000 chemical substances ny Hoffmann-La Roche. A reactor producing trichlorophenol heats up, and large German unions which have been used in the EU for many quantities of dioxin escape. Only a few maintenance and temporary workers are years are largely unknown. Last year the inside the factory. The toxic cloud disseminates invisibly. chemicals industry prevailed, imposing a Production continued for 10 days afterwards until management admitted that ‘compromise between economic effi cien- a very dangerous substance had leaked from the reactor and that the surroundings “The German Trade Union Federation cy and environmentalism’. According to might be contaminated. During these days animals of all kinds died in large num- and the chemical union IGBCE protes- these terms the standard should become bers. The dioxin caused breathing diffi culties and then chlorine acne in the inhabit- ted against a tightening of EU chemi- less bureaucratic and most importantly it ants of the surrounding municipalities. Eventually a wide area was closed off and a cals legislation. In a letter to all Ger- should not burden the European indus- large part of the popula tion was evacuated. Some of the incompetent authorities’ man members of the EU parliament, try unduly in the international competi- emergency measures even increased the damage done to nature and to humans. In they advocate the implementation of tion. The environmental commission in the end, pregnant women were allowed to abort; back then abortion was still strict- the compromise reached in parliament and the dismissal of further-reaching the meantime has made the draft a tar- ly forbidden in Italy. The workers‘ group of the neighbouring Montedison factory attempts by the environmental commis- get for attack. Especially controversial is in Castellanza contacted the workers in Seveso immediately. A people’s committee sion. The unions said the commission‘s the banning of dangerous chemic als for was established, in order to reveal the causes of the accident and to call those re- approach diverged greatly from the which alternatives exist, even where cost sponsible to account. The magazine Sapere published an extens ive report that same agreed compromises and would en- to the industry is increased. year. All the experts were excluded from the state’s crisis management. The Icmesa danger jobs in the chemical industry. The environmental commission has trial dragged on for years, ending in 1987 with acquittal on almost all counts. The The criticism was levelled for ex- dismissed exceptions for Airbus, which incidents of Seveso made clear the recklessness of chemical factories’ production ample at the intention to ban and fi reproofs its passenger seats with chemi- and that the workers have to take the struggle against health damage into their replace dangerous substances. Accor- cal substances. The leader of the CDU/ own hands. ding to the letter this was not always possible or necessary, as some of the- EPP parliamentary group fears a ‚disaster‘ se substances could be handled safely if Airbus will have to test these products Ludwigshafen-Oppau and without danger. Furthermore, they time-consumingly and then possibly have Large chemical accidents also occurred in Germany – for example the long-forgot- would go on to exist on the EU market to do without them. ten explosion of a BASF factory in Ludwigshafen-Oppau on the 21st of September through the importation of ready-made (cf. Stuttgarter Zeitung, 11 October 06) 1921, which cost 561 lives and erased an entire district. products from non-EU countries.“ " (Frankfurter Rundschau, 2 Nov. 2006)

56 57 The struggle is worth it! where chloride and caustic soda are pro- habitant per year in the municipality of duced by electrolysis, covered all of Porto Venice. Marghera.“ In this situation the union asked for more money for the workers – it wanted The autonomous assembly of Porto Mar- to solve this problem by means of hazard ghera wrote in 1974: ”The workers do pay only. The hazard was already ob- not go to the factory to conduct inquiry vious back then and it still is now, as in Speech by Gianni Sbrogiò in March 2006 but because they are forced to. Work is many factories it has by no means been at the University of Padua as part of a se- not a way of life, but the necessity of sell- solved. We said it can‘t be done like that. minar on the workers‘ fi ght against death ing oneself so as to survive. By fi ghting You can‘t just take a little bit more money caused by asbestos. Workers from Porto against work, against the coercion to sell and leave everything as it was. We inven- Marghera and Sesto San Gio vanni were ourselves, we offend against all rules of ted slogans, aiming to ask how work in present on the podium. In Italy the use of society. And by fi ghting for less work, so the factory could be organised differently asbestos was only prohibited from 1992 as not to die of poisoning through work from the way we have to endure it now. (Germany: 1993, U.K.: 1985 outlawing any more, we fi ght against health haz- We said: an end to health hazard pay of amphibole asbestos). Workers‘ deaths the conditions when compared to the al- ards. Because it damages one‘s health to and we tried independently to fi nd out from the malignant tumor mesothelioma, ready dramatically bad situation at the get up every morning and go to work, it is how we could organise in order to spend which grows in the pleura, peritonea old plant are terrible. Everything is there: harmful to keep to the work cycles, to the less time at the factory. or pericardium, continue. Cases are ex- health hazard, huge workloads, noise methods of production, it is harmful to do pected to peak between 2010 and 2015. and authoritarian conditions. A brief over- shift work, it is harmful to go home with At the Petrolchimico the workers organised It is hard to diagnose this illness early and view over the work conditions in the new a wage that forces you to go back to the for themselves different working hours in it almost always ends fatally. The workers departments: factory the next day.“ an obstinate, precise and concrete man- concerned were working with asbestos TDI (phosgene production): already ner outside of and without the union. The mostly in the ‚70s: at Eternit, Breda (ship- 150 poisoned workers at the end of And then, in March 1975 the collective work at the Petrolchimico was organised building), in train construction and at the 1972. against health-damaging production in shifts, just like today. And in order to Petrolchimico. At the CR department the noise and vi- wrote a pamphlet and printed it together spend less time at the factory the workers brations caused by the huge compressors with other factory groups, in which they made a shift plan as a form of struggle, I want to read to you a few sentences from are unbearable. After eight hours of work, notifi ed the population and workers of consisting of fi ve instead of four shifts. So the fl yers we made back then. the workers lose their sense of balance. the constant, i.e. 24/7, emission of vinyl that one only had to work 36, rather than November 1972, analysis of the wor- At the DL department, where perchlo- chloride, a cancer-causing gas all over the 40 hours. Thus the contractor had to fi nd king conditions at the factory: roethylene is produced, 70 people have areas of Marghera, Mestre and Venice. other workers during the week, in order to ”It emerges from the new meetings of the already been poisoned. In August, a At the time, 4000 kilogrammes daily were fi ll the remaining jobs. This struggle went new departments at Petrolchimico 2 that cloud of chloride from the CS department, emitted, that‘s 3000 kilogrammes per in- on for a good while, then it receded. In

58 59 other factories we were able to win the re- against the endangering of health. It was The struggle is worth it! duction of working hours permanently. At more important to avoid the health hazard Ammi the workers in zinc production had of the factory completely. That‘s why, via I think one of the main reasons for today‘s organised themselves and pushed through a departmental committee, we contacted situation is that they somehow managed to work six, rather than eight hours a day, work medicine in Padua. Doctor comra- to persuade us that struggling doesn‘t pay with the same pay, of course. des from there then undertook investiga- off! But I think the contrary is true: strug- tions in the factory for their research and gling does pay off! I want to emphasise Absenteeism we used the doctors to inform the workers another thing: capital has developed be- of all kinds of problems they had at work. cause there was a workers‘ struggle. In re- Another thing we wanted to defend was Our demand: closure of the plant, sani- ality, each form of struggle, each demand the workers‘ very spontaneous work atti- tation according to the technical-scientifi c by the workers leads to a jump in the de- tude back then – but I think it still exists state-of-the-art, re-opening of the plant. velopment of capital, clearly accompanied today: absenteeism. In order to protect Wages were to be guaranteed during the by an improvement of the workers‘ living oneself against intensifi cation of labour, whole closure time. conditions. There is always the other side the hours, the endangering of health and My question is now: is the situation to- of the coin: in a certain way the boss suc- against this unbearable organisation of day really so different from the one back ceeds in capturing the workers‘ struggle in work, the workers stayed at home and then? Yes, the de veloped countries have order to increase his power or somehow used illness as a spontaneous form of made sure that all noxious work is outsour- to keep hold of it, and the working class defence against the hazardous nature of ced to the underdeveloped countries. At – even if the term is a bit out of fashion work. As the Autonomous Assembly we the same time, capital has made use of today – succeeds by struggling to improve published a small pamphlet explaining precarious and illegal employment to take its living conditions. Surely our living condi- how we needed to organise so that the working conditions backwards in many tions are not only a quantitative but also absentee worker could not be punished. sectors. Therefore not all that much has a qualitative issue. I am convinced that it The contractor and the health insurances changed. But it seems to me that the will can only be improved by joining forces, would send examining doctors to check to struggle has diminished. A lot of peo- establishing aims and forms of struggle whether the worker was really ill. And ple think the working class‘ problems can through which power can be taken form we or ganised a kind of `red aid‘, as a be solved in other ways, but you young the bosses. " way of pre-empting the bosses‘ repressive people can experience for yourselves how action against this spontaneous struggle. work is getting more and more precarious We were supported in this by a few lawy- – if there is any – and how conditions er comrades, who defended any sacked have worsened. Wage rises don‘t even abenteeist workers for free. Obviously the- cover infl ation any more. se were very defensive forms of struggle

60 61 The refusal of work What does it mean to destroy the po- are forced to work must be overturned. In wer of the bosses? Who are the bosses this sense the experiences of the Chinese and what do they want? These questions and Cuban revolutions have to be taken Porto Marghera seem stupid but really they are fundamen- into account as well. tal if we want to lay down our political Workers‘ Committee line against work. First of all we have More than anything it is in the nature of to say that the common sense claim that capitalism to try to conserve this power (1970) the bosses exploit the workers in order relation against the working class and to enrich themselves is wrong. Of course to use its development to strengthen this this is true but the wealth of the bosses is power more and more. This means that in no proportion to their power. Agnelli all the machines, the technological inno- for example would have to walk around vations, the development of industries, dressed in gold in proportion to the cars just as the underdevelopment of certain he produces, but instead he settles for a areas, are used to control the working In 1973, Merve Publishers in Berlin published Toni Negri‘s small book Die Krise des boat and a private aeroplane, something class politically. By now, there are classi- Plan-Staats. Kommunis mus und revolutionäre Organisation. Its appendix contains texts the boss of a much more modest factory cal examples of this capitalist behaviour; than Fiat could also afford. What Agnelli the introduction of the conveyor belt in the by Ferruccio Gambino (Gegen den Fab rikismus, für politischen Lohn), by the Porto wants is to keep and develop his power, 1920s, for example, was a response to Marghera Workers‘ Committee and by Augusto Finzi. and this coincides with the development the revolutionary wave which shook the and growth of capitalism. Capitalism is world in the years immediately after the We are reprinting the text by the Workers’ Committee because here workers formulate an impersonal force and capitalists act First World War. They wanted to get rid the central claims of operaismo: as its functionaries. Actually, capitalism of the kind of skilled working class which – workers’ struggle is immediately political struggle, i.e. a struggle for power; does not even need capitalists any more. had made the Russian revolution of 1917 – workers are forced to work in order to control them; In Russia, for eample, there is capitalism and the factory councils movement all – workers are a special force and stand against society in its entirety. although there are no capitalists. The exis- over Europe possible. The conveyor belt tence of capitalism in Russia is revealed deskilled all workers, pushing back the by the existence of profi t. It is probably revolutionary wave and even changing We did not have space here for Augusto Finzi’s text from 1972 in which he argues for distributed “more justly“ but the commu- the appearance of class struggle; in many the formation of Politic al Committees and which served as material for the debate on nist revolution does not aim at making the countries, all this led to a defi nite politi- the nation congress of Potere Operaio. You can read it [in German] at wildcat-www.de. distribution of social profi t more just, it cal defeat because there in the absence of If you have read it you will understand better what Augusto Finzi had in mind with his aims at overturning the very capitalist re- any political organisation able to adapted self-critique of ‘sectari anism’ in the long interview which is in the DVD as a special lations of production which create profi t. its intervention to the new type of workers‘ feature. A social system that ensures that people behaviour. 62 63 Now however, this technical structure has department means that there is work for society than the currently existing one pos- curtail capitalist power; secondly, that this turned against capital by producing a only let‘s say 100 out of 200 workers and sible. control is exercised mainly through work; massifi cation of wage demands, and one that the rest will have to go as victims of Therefore the workers need to create an in fact there was no way the bosses of of the main reasons for that is the fl at struc- an inevitable progress. organisation which is capable of fi ghting these American factories would have re- ture of the cycle of production. Capital is But the workers have a completely dif- back against the bosses‘ political control, duced the working day for all in order to therefore revolutionising this structure, and ferent logic: according to them, the intro- capable of taking all the power necessary give work to the newly employed. They in the meantime it tries to get rid of wor- duction of the aforementioned machine to make class interests triumph. Right now kept up the old working day even at the kers and to create much wider wage diffe- could mean that instead of 100 people everything is useful for the bosses and price of going back to working conditions rentials than currently exist, by introducing working 8 hours there might very well their mechanisms of power, from science which had existed before the automation automation literally as a political attack on be 200 people working 4 hours. Apart to workers‘ struggle itself if it does not of the plant. Thus capital is willing to go the working class. from making it more bearable to remain really aim at destroying the relations of back, to build technically superseded ma- In the United States, this manoeuvre in the factory this logic would also solve production, that is, at escaping from the chinery just to control the workers politi- has already taken place, and the only the problem of unemployment. Thus the political control of the bosses. cally; to this end it is even willing to pay reason the bosses haven‘t repeated it in workers are not against the machines but people whose work is completely void. Italy is that they aren‘t sure they can con- against those who use the machines to im- The bosses are even willing to spend mo- This is where the question of the refusal trol the workers‘ response to the attack. pose work on them. Some people say that ney to control the workers politically and of work becomes central. With the current This shows that progress, the development work is necessary. We reply that the sheer keep their power. In America, they are the development of machines, it is possible to much fl aunted by the bosses, is nothing amount of accumulated science (see for ones who are going against ‚progress‘. work much less, provided that the machi- but an ongoing attempt to adapt the or- example the missions to the moon) is such For example, some factories where wor- nes invented by modern science do not ganisation of collective capital to working that work can immediately be reduced ker numbers had been reduced through become the exclusive monopoly of the class attack. Technological progress is to a merely peripheral aspect of human automation were forced to return to old United States and the Soviet Union as cur- never neutral or inevitable, as the bosses life, rather being conceived as the ”very productive systems to re-employ workers, rently happens, but are instead available and the unions have told us it is every time reason of human existence“. Some peo- under massive pressure from the struggles for use throughout the world. We need to there is talk of redundancies caused by ple say that man has always worked. We in led mostly in America by the black un- impose the workers‘ logic according to the introduction of new machines. Exactly reply that according to the Bible the earth employed. Obviously this doesn‘t mean which many machines should be invented because they believe in the fairytale of the is fl at and the sun revolves around it. Be- the black unemployed had aimed for this in order to reduce the working day more neutrality of science, the unions limit those fore Galilei, this was reality, it had always result, but it shows how the bosses are and more, tendentially making it disap- struggles to the defence of jobs and nev- been like this, it was the scientifi c point of using science to exercise political cont- pear. The workers‘ needs are communist er approach the problem from the point view. But rather than giving scientifi c dem- rol over the working class. The bosses‘ needs. of view of the reduction of the working onstrations the problem is revolutionising behaviour shows two things: fi rstly, that At this point we cannot speak of soci- day. They believe or pretend to believe the current social order and asserting the progress is not neutral at all, that it is de- alism any more. Socialism is what exists that the bosses are telling the truth: that interest of those who have materially cre- cided exclusively from the point of view of in the Soviet Union, a new organisation the introduction of some machine in some ated the conditions which make a better politically controlling the forces that might of work, but this is not what the workers

64 65 want. The workers want to work less and trying to raise productivity without any pital is a power which reproduces itself less until anything which effectively means thought of reducing the working day. In independently of the volition of single indi- coercion to work disappears. plants like these it is much easier to show viduals; therefore, abolishing capital does that the interest of the system is in using not mean abolishing private property but It is not true that in this society we are free. work as a form of political control over destroying the relation of production itself, We are free to get up to go to work every the workers. As a matter of fact, there are it means to destroy the need to work. morning. ‚If you don‘t work you don‘t eat!‘ very few manual operations and very little Nobody can say what concrete effects Is this freedom? There is one thing which psychological stress involved; all that is this revolution will entail. Even less can we restricts our freedom: work. In reality, we left is the physical presence of the worker answer the ques tion of those who ask us are forced to work. The saying according next to the machine, the capitalist violence with what we want to replace that which to which work ennobles is an invention of which wants humans to be conditioned to we want to destroy. This is not the problem. the bosses. When all people are free from and enslaved by the machine. In none of the great revolutions in history the need to work because there is enough But which are the means to abolish all did people know beforehand with what for them to eat, dress and satisfy their pri- this? The goal is to break the control me- they were going to replace that which mary desires, then there will be real free- chanism which capital has subordinated they were about to tear down, because in dom! We claim that already now, with the workers to. Workers are against society revolutionary times the characters of peo- existing machines, it would be possible to in its entirety, they are different from all ple, the relationships between the classes realise many of those things which seem the others because society in its entirety change so radically that it is impossible to like science fi ction when we talk about is structured against them and has even establish any historical hypothesis. them like this. In the CV 16 department, perfected itself as an answer to the move- In order to abolish capitalism, the wor- for instance, dur ing the last `collective ments of the working class. As we have kers will have to change human history agreement‘ strikes of 1969, management seen, the struggle of the working class is much more profoundly and radically than kept the autoclaves running by using new actually the most important driving force the French revolution, therefore it is im- instruments for the automatic operation of for the development of capitalism. Think possible to predict what will hap pen after- the facilities. The workers were at home of the French May where the small fac- wards. Rather, what is important now is to and the fa cilities kept producing. On that tories fell into crisis: this crisis contribut- see how we can destroy the existing. " occasion, the bosses wanted to show they ed to the concentration of capital and to were stronger, so they didn‘t care if they the development of monopolies. Think of delegitimised all their talk about the need the USSR where the 1917 revolution has for human labour. In the Montedison nitra- accelerated capitalist development so te plant they are using an electronic com- much that a backward country like czarist puter which automatically runs the ammo- Russia could become one of the strongest nia production facilities: there too they are capitalist countries in the world. Thus, ca-

66 67 Participants in the events From the 80s onwards, Finzi had been In 1964 he fi rst came into contact with increasingly interested in herbal medi- intellectuals in Veneto (Negri, Cacciari, cine and healthy food. He founded the Bianchini), who in troduced a new kind club Amina – friends of nature – in 1997. of debate, diametrically opposed to the Augusto Finzi He gave talks and held courses on herbal PCI’s, where the apparatus passed the Born 1941 in Venice to Jewish parents medicine. political line downwards, expecting obe- who took him to safety in a refugee camp Finzi took part in the court cases against dience. Sbrogiò left the PCI in 1967 and in Switzerland after the armistice on the the Petrolchimico. After 10 years of court started building the group Potere Operaio 8th of September 1943, when the Nazis proceedings, it was established on the 7th at Petrolchimico, together with Finzi and expanded Jewish deportation policies to er and organiser. After his expulsion from of April 2004 that he had been made ill by Massa. In 1967 they published their fi rst Italy. After the liberation he returned to the trade union he helped build Potere asbestos, but the company was not held fl yer and their fi rst newspaper. He was ex- Venice. He graduated as a technician in Operaio in Mar ghera. In 1972 he played responsible for the deadly tumour which pelled from the union in June 1969. 1960 from the Institute Pacinotti in Mest- a decisive role in the temporary fusion of killed Finzi in June 2004. He left behind Within Potere Operaio he was a strict re. He then worked for 18 years as tech- Potere Operaio and Il Manifesto in Politi- nu merous pamphlets from back then as exponent of the workers’ line. In 1995 nician at the Petrol chimico, also at the cal commitees. Later again he was involved well as his own notes on the workers‘ or- he published a book about his history department for PVC production CV6. in the fusion of Lotta Continua and the ganisation in Porto Marghera, which now and Porto Marghera. As part of the 7th of Initially he sympathised with the PSIUP workers’ co-ordination in the Autonomous form the basis for the ‘workers’-archive’ April he was investigated for several years, and was a member of the CGIL. Assembly of Porto Marghera. He was aim- which has been named after him. but fi nally acquitted during the trial. He In 1967 he discovered at the company’s ing for a new form of workers’ organisa- is one of the founders of the Augusto Finzi‘ library an article published in Chemical tion without separate political leadership. Italo Sbrogiò workers‘ archive. Abstracts, which confi rmed that the pro- Finzi was co-publisher of the workers’ Born 1934 in Favaro on the Venetian duction of MVC had been classifi ed as newspapers Lavoro Zero and ControLavoro. ‘mainland’. He started to work in the cancer-causing in Russia in 1946. Thus He left the Petrolchimico in 1978 with Porto Marghera indus trial zone in the began his lifelong campaign against death no other work lined up. On the 21st of 50s and later worked for Petrolchimico. caused by the chemicals industry and the December 1979 he was arrested in the Member of the PCI. He was voted into senselessness of capitalism. During the course of the 7th of April investigations. the Commissione Interna in 1960 via the confl ict about the “harmonized“ labour He was held on remand for two years and CGIL. Later he took a PCI seat on the city agreement after Edison’s takeover of Mon- eight months. He was eventually convic- council of Venice, where he was the only tecatini, Finzi went from being a lone crit- ted, and a day-release prisoner for a few worker. The party even talked of sending ical lone thinker to being a workers’ lead- months after the trial. him into parliament in Rome. 68 69 that he was fi nally fully acquitted. Today In 1983 he took part in the initiative for he is active in the rent struggle and in Solo dissociation from the armed struggle and l‘inizio, an association that runs a food co- was relocated to Rebibbia (Rome). He op and organises political events. He is a was sentenced to a long period of impri- co-founder of the ‘Augusto Finzi‘ workers‘ sonment in 1984, but because of the long archive. time he’d already been on remand the sen- tence was fi nally halved. Only by means Gianni Sbrogiò of a hunger strike was he fi nally able to Born 1946 in Favaro in the Venetian hin- bring about his release on bail after four terland. Higher education was out of reach and a half years of imprisonment. Germano Mariti and he enrolled in the business school, so kers and no longer wanted to stand “on Born 1936 in Venice. His father ran a as at least to be able to become a white the outside“. There was also a strike at Bruno Massa grocery store, where he helped out. He collar employee rather than a blue col- COIN in 1969 – he was the only white Technician at Petrolchimico, member of the “escaped“ from a carpenter‘s apprentice- lar worker. In 1962 he was employed by collar employee to take part and the wor- Workers’ committee of Potere Operaio. Af- ship into the zinc factory at the age of 19; the COIN department store group chain. kers called him “the foreman who was also ter the struggles of 1968 he was punished initially this was liberating compared to In 1964, when he was 19, he was made on strike“ from then on. He left the PCI with transferral to a factory in Abruzzo. his previous personal dependencies. He manager of a sewing department with after its national congress in 1969. At the He resigned and worked as librarian at the worked in the electroplating shop. In women – a role which soon made him end of the same year he was employed by university of Venice. He joined the PSIUP, 1969 Gianni Sbro giò started working as feel uncomfortable. He started attend- Ammi (formerly Monteponi Montevecchio). an organisation close to il manifesto, and an accountant at the same company; he ing evening school in 1966 and gained Together with Germano Mariti they built later the PCI. Died 2003. was already a member of the political com- an accountancy degree in 1967. He was their own factory committee. Produced mittee of Potere Operaio at this time. As a a member of the PCI in his hometown, fl yers against health-damaging work. Guido Bianchini non-union member, Mariti was elected to where his brother Lino led the divi sion. In the course of the investigations of the Born 1926 in Verona, he was one of Italy’s the fi rst factory council at Ammi in 1970. He experienced the student movement of 7th of April he was arrested on the 24th of youngest partisans. He lived in Ferrara Activist at the Autonomous Assembly of 1968 mostly through reading L’Unità and January 1980, charged with “forming an and Padua. At the end of the 50s he was Porto Marghera. When his comrades were through the debates in the local PCI sec- armed gang“ and “attempted robbery“ at a member of the PSI, where he met Neg- already in prison he continued to publish tion, where slogans such as “be wary of Ammi. ri and Quaderni Rossi. Co-founder of the ControLavoro until 1981. In the course of provocations“ were spread. He joined his In the nick he met lots of old comrades. Potere Operaio Veneto Classe Operaia edi- the 7th of April he was being investigated brother Italo’s group in Porto Marghera Together with non-political prisoners they torial group. He was involved in opera ismo for many years, and it was only in 1993 late. He felt close to the struggling wor- fought for better conditions in the prison. from the earliest beginnings and earned 70 71 his money as pharmaceuticals salesman by the Socialist government, along with Ferruccio Brugnaro for a long time, until he found a job as a many other exiles from Italy, and worked Born in 1936 in Mestre, worked in Porto technician at the university of Padua; si- as lecturer at the university. In 1997 he Marghera since the 1950s. Active in the multaneously, he did workers’ inquiries in returned to Italy and was arrested again. factory council. In 1965 started distribu- Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. He was one Spent some time in prison and then lived ting poems as leafl ets to the workers. Ber- of the people already distributing fl yers freely in Rome. Today he lives in Venice. telli made songs out of some of them. out side the Petrolchimico in 1964. In the Numerous publications, including many early 1970s, in Quaderni del Progetto, he available in English. Today he is well-known Gabriele Bortolozzo introduced things like the diffuse factory mostly be cause of the book Empire, which Born 1934. Employed at the Petrolchimico and the socialized worker (operaio sociale) he wrote with Michael Hardt. in Frankfurt, and for Bologna/Cacciari for 32 years. An activist against the deadly into the discussion. He was arrested in the Zusammensetzung der Arbeiterklasse und work in the factory since the 1970s. He course of the 7th of April 1979 and 1980. Massimo Cacciari Organisationsfrage, published by Merve in set in motion the legal case against the While in prison he graduated in chemist- Born 1944 in Venice. Philosopher and 1973. management of the Petrol chimico. He ry. He was acquitted in the trial. Bianchini currently mayor of Venice. He was a mem- died in a car accident in 1995. The court died in 1998 in Padua. ber of Potere Op eraio and then joined the Nerone Piccolo opened the case in 1998. PCI. In the 70s he was in charge of the in- Worker at Breda, member of CGIL and The young workers discussing over Antonio Negri dustry commission of the PCI in Venice. PCI. the kitchen table, fought (in vain) against Born 1933. Became a member of the PSI- Between 1976 and 1983 a member of Giorgio Brazzolotto the closure of their department, CAPRO- left in Padua, edited its weekly paper Il parliament in Rome, and also member of Worker at the SAVA aluminium factory. LATTAME in Petrolchimico. They are uni- Progresso Veneto. In the editorial groups of the industry committee. After the death Member of the CGIL. onists and members of left parties. Quaderni Rossi, Classe Operaia, and Potere of PCI leader Berlinguer, Cacciari left the Operaio. Temporary chairman of the nati- party and joined more moder ate currents onal organisation of Potere Operaio. of the centre-left-coalition. Politically he In 1967 he became professor at the now belongs to the Margherita (‚Daisy‘) Institute of Political Science in Padua. alli ance of parties. Mayor of Venice from Arrested on the 7th of April 1979 and 1993 until 2000 and again since 2005. charged with forming an armed gang and In the 1970s he became known in high treason. Released after being elected the German-speaking world for his essay to parliament on the Radical Party list. Qualifi kation und Klassenbewusstsein, Escaped to Paris, where he was tolerated pub lished in 1970 by Verlag Neue Kritik 72 73 Glossary CISNAL – Confederazione Italiana Sinda- representation structure in the company, were thrown out of the party. Since 1971 cati Nazionali dei Lavoratori. Union con- which replaced the Commissione Interna. Il Manifesto has been published as a daily DC – Democrazia Cristiana. Christian De- federation close to the fascist MSI party. The workers statute of 1970 gave the right paper. In 1974 they merged with the Par- mocratic Party. Today renamed to UGL. to union representation in the workplace ty of Proletarian Unity PdUP. Il Manifesto‘s (RSA), but does not dictate a particular 1970 `Theses on communism‘ were also PCI – Partito Comunista Italiano. Italian Commissione Interna – Internal Commissi- form: this is left up to the union itself. In discussed widely in West Ger many. Communist Party. Today DS – Democratici on. Union shop stewards in the company, 1993 the three union confederations uni- di Sinistra (Left Democrats). elected by all employees. Re-introduced in ted over the election of `unifi ed union Lotta Continua – Permanent Struggle. 1943 with the legal right to sign collec- representation‘ (RSU). Two thirds of the Biggest extra-parliamentary group of the PSI – Partito Socialista Italiano, Socialist tive contracts with individual companies; members were voted directly from a list, radical left, founded in 1969 from a split Party. which they then lost in 1947. At the end one third of the places were allocated to in the worker-student movement in Turin, of the 1960s they were replaced by the the unions, who had signed the collective which had massively supported the strike PSIUP – Partito Socialista Italiano d‘Unità department representatives and the facto- contract. at Fiat. LC did neighbourhood work under Proletaria, Italian Socialist Party of Prole- ry councils. the slogan ‚Let‘s take the city‘. Dissolved tarian Unity, left splinter group of the PSI. Il Manifesto – The Manifesto. Oppositio- in 1976. Published a daily newspaper of Existed from 1964 until 1972 and played Consiglio di Fabbrica – Factory Council. nal group inside the PCI around Rossana the same name that ran until 1982. an important role in the workers struggles The election (and retraction) of depart- Rossanda and Lu cio Magri, who were 1968/69 in Valdagno and at Fiat. ment representatives which was practiced also members of parliament. In June 1969 Classe Operaia – Working class. Political during the 1969/69 struggles was then the fi rst edition of their newspaper Il Ma- newspaper, formed by the `interventionist‘ CGIL – Confederazione Generale Italia- taken up by the unions to create a new nifesto appeared, in December 1969 they wing of the Quaderni Rossi. Published na del Lavoro. Formerly communist union from 1964 to 1967. confederation. Quaderni Rossi – Red Notebooks. A news- CISL – Confederazione Italiana Sindacati paper stated in Turin in 1961 by Panzieri, Lavoratori. Christian union confederation. who had taken part in the workers inquiry. The operaism tendency came out of this UIL – Unione Italiana del Lavoro. Right paper. wing, social democratic union confede- ration. Comitato Operaio di Porto Marghera – Porto Marghera Workers‘ Committee. FIOM – Federazione Italiania Operai Me- Formed by the Potere Operaio group in talmeccanici. Metal workers union of the Venice, i.e. those workers who had taken CGIL. up contact with the intellectuals from Potere 74 75 Operaio, in order to bring Potop‘s politi- wever the same problems came up again, phase when the chemical workers reject- Potere Operaio Veneto-Emiliano – News- cal line into the factories. There were also as some people brought up the organisa- ed the new collective contract. The Work- paper published by the local editorial oth er workers in the Committee, some of tional question and pushed the Coordi- ers Committee, together with workers from group of Classe Op eraia, it ran for three them belonged to the workers groups in nation towards the Autonomia Operaia Lotta Continua and other workers who years and then merged into the national the Petrolchimico or at Ammi. They ne- Organizzata. The Workers Committee did had left the union, tried to organize this Potere Operaio newspaper. ver went to Potop‘s national meetings, not get involved with that. discontent. To be an Autonomous Assem- but they knew that there was this connec- bly meant to be autonomous from political Prima Linea – First Row. Armed group tion. The Committee had its own meeting Assemblea Autonoma di Porto Marghera groups, from the unions and from political formed in 1976 by former Lotta Continua place, which was open to the public af- – Autonomous Assembly of Porto Marghe- parties. It was supposed be both a mass and Potere Op eraio members. Its mem- ter the shift. The discussions were about ra. Formed in 1972 in the reorientation organization and a political organization. bers refused to go underground, in order concrete struggles and demands. In the It was an attempt to build another structure to remain present within the movement. beginning the discussions were open to based on all the experiences of the previ- Disbanded in 1981. ‚externals‘: those who were not directly ous years instead of starting from scratch involved in the struggles, but rather sym- again, and to expand from there. They Brigate Rosse – Red Brigades. Formed in pathized with Potop and had other jobs. used the old meeting point of the Workers 1970. Largest armed group in Italy. The In those times there was a more movement Committee, but also the Social Centres in fi rst actions were directed against fore- like atmosphere. The actual responsible Marghera. Many workers who took part men and company executives in factories. work however remained on the shoulders did not belong to any political group. The Later they strategy aimed at the `heart of of about 15 people. With Potop‘s crisis in Autonomous Assembly functioned until the state‘, including the kidnapping of 1972 the workers wanted to limit partici- 1975 when the phase of the Autonomia Aldo Moro, the head of the DC. pation to workers and exclude externals, Operaia Or ganizzata. who were seen to only want to debate Autoriduzione – Self reduction of rent, political lines and armed actions. Against Autonomia Operaia Organizzata — electricity and gas bills, food prices. the basic line of Potop, this eventually led Organised Workers Autonomy. A party Collective form of struggle in the early to a split between economic and political project after 1975. An attempt by various 1970s. struggle, i.e. between a union struggle groups within the Autonomia to organize and a political-military one. In this situati- the countercultural Movement of 1977. Scala mobile – literally: Escalator; offi cial on the Workers Committee sought contact Italian name: contingenza. Automatic cost to other `autonom ous‘ workers‘ groups in Comitati Politici – Political Committees. of living bonus on top of the wage using other cities at Alfa, Pirelli, Siemens etc. Attempt to merge Potere Operaio with Il a points system. Abolished in 1977. Due Only comrades who worked in factories Manifesto in common Political Commit- to the high infl ation rates in the 1970s, themselves were allowed to take part at tees, which only lasted a few months. the bonus part of the wage formed an their joint meetings. After three years ho- Pushed ahead by Finzi in particular. increasingly large part of the wage. For

76 77 this reason the wages of all wage workers `na tional solidarity‘ in 1978 for restabi- increasingly converged. lising the Italian state. When parliament Further Reading: were due to discuss the government pro- Strategy of tension – From 1969 to 1984 gramme on the 16th March 1978 (when Operaismo Dossier members of the Italian military secret ser- the PCI had just won the majority for the vice SISMI (pre viously called SID), neo- fi rst time) the Red Brigades kidnapped DC fascists and parts of the Gladio network head Aldo Moro, the most important me- http://www.wildcat-www.de/dossiers/ began a swathe of terror attacks and mur- diating fi gure of this alliance. In the ensu- operaismus/operaismus_dossier.htm ders in Italy killing more than 200 people ing repression against the radical left, PCI and injuring about 600. The two most politicians took the hardest stance of all. A collection of texts and interviews spectacular attacks marked the beginning around operaismo in German (not and the end of this phase: Piazza Fonta- 7. April 1979 – On this day the wave of only) from Wildcat. This includes na in Milan in 1969 (16 dead) and the arrests against the members of Autonomia out-of-print texts by Alquati, Panzieri, train station in Bologna in 1980. Through began. Tronti and others. the dissemination of false information and falsi fi ed evidence, a secret service net- Movement of 1977 – Cultural and youth work ensured that the Left were blamed movement which started in Bologna in the Books: for these crimes. spring of 1977 and grew quickly mainly Steve Wright: Storming Heaven. in the university towns. It did not really A theoretical history of Operaism, Historical Compromise – from the 1973 have roots in the previous movements and Pluto Press, 2002 military coup in Chile, PCI head Berlinguer clearly had a different social base, which drew the conclusion that the PCI could not marked them apart from the movements come to power through elections without of 1968 and 1973. They refused the risking right-wing attempts of authoritarian political elites, including those of 1968, infi ltration. His strategic line was to coope- criticised the groups such as Lotta Conti- rate with the democratic parties, in order nua and Autonomia Organizzata and to reach a consensus of reformist politics. broke with the unions. Many activists later Parts of the PCI and the DC left hoped for ended up in armed groups, many of them a coalition government which never came were wrecked by the systematic infl ux of about. In practice, the historical compro- Heroin into the movement. mise meant the three union confederati- Title page of the Rosso newspaper 1977: ons‘ `politics of sacrifi ce‘ since 1976 and You have paid dearly, support for Andreotti‘s DC government of You have not paid it all!

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