This text combines quotes from Dario, Michele and Roberto / Collettivo di Fabbrica with a conversation with Angelika at the Ex GKN factory on December 5, 2024.
Summary of the situation
The ex-GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio near Florence has been occupied for three years, five months and 25 days. In July 9, 2021, 422 permanent employees were informed by email that the factory was closing. The Collettivo di Fabbrica has been keeping watch day and night in three shifts, since then – seven days a week, 365 days a year, from a barrack in front of the factory halls. In two weeks, the Tuscany region willdecide on a law toallow industrial development consortia to expropriate land in the interests of ecological conversion. hat was promised last June when workers pitched their tents in front of the regional administration for 21 days and three members of the Collettivo were on hunger strike.
The Collettivo di Fabbrica wages a unique struggle for the preservation of jobs in the region, to convert ecologically the former FIAT factory to photovoltaic panels and cargo bikes from half-shafts for fossil fuel engines. It aims at a self-determined assembly democracy. What makes it unique? T he duration of the struggle, the versatility of intersectional collaborations and a broad political-cultural public relations work that created and keeps alive an immense solidarity. After almost three years of occupation, 40,000 people still took to the streets in Florence on May 18, 2024 to support the collective’s demands. in August 2024 the proclaimed people’s shares for the planned factory consortium had reached 800,000 euros, four weeks later it was 1.3 million. The collective collaborates with Fridays For Future. On October 12, Greta Thunberg participatedin ameeting in Campi Bisenzio. Solidarity with other struggles (from opponents of the Florence airport expansion to the struggle for the rights of the Palestinian people) is expressed. At the collective’s weekly meetings – with temperatures just above zero and burning logs in metal barrels – more than 100 participants still come together, including many outsiders. Of the former 422 employees, 120 have remained, without pay for the past eleven months. They continue to go into the factory, or rather the barracks, day and night for the usual three work shifts of eight hours. They dedicate themselves to enormous mobilization and self-organization, with intelligence, perseverance and exhaustion.
How did it all begin?
“On July 9, 2021, we were dismissed by collective mail: On the same day, we unhinged the factory gate and the permanent assembly began. There was already a history of union struggle and internal organization that had been handed down since the days of the old Fiat plant (until 1994). Then, with the closure of the company, we made a virtue of necessity and organized in a different way: we tried to involve as many people as possible, starting with the environment here in Florence. We knew that you can’t save yourself and that the fight can’t be an abstract thing, we have to turn it into something concrete, real and tangible. If you come out, show your face to the outside world, you get solidarity from other people. We wanted to show that we are not just waiting for trade union intervention from FIOM (metalworkers’ union within the national trade union confederation CGIL), but that we want to move the environment first and foremost.”
“Back then it was like a perfect storm, although there was absolutely nothing perfect, everything was improvised. But a number of factors came together. . . the inherited militant tradition of this factory, which was fossilized. . . gave us themes like workers’ pride and the assembly democracy of the metalworkers. There was a notion of willingness to fight, of there being a moment when we fight, when we strike, when everything stops.
When the Melrose financial fund came on the scene in 2018, we understood that we were at the end of a journey. This was the transition from Fiat to GKN (British public limited company) in 1994; and the downsizing of GKN from more than a thousand employees to just over 400. Fiat left, replaced by FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), FCA became Stellantis and then GKN, handed over to this global financial fund Melrose. Its’ mission was obviously to close us down. In all those years, from 2007 onwards, this process was not a linear one where someone decided that we had to move in a certain direction. It was more of a melee. They did something and we prepared ourselves to react. A process in which we were forced to grow.
In 2018, it became clear, that participatory trade union work is the only way to withstand this conflict. We officially declared the factory collective and trained our liaison delegates. Trade union democracy in Italy has many shortcomings, but it recognizes the autonomy of union representatives in the workplace. When I am elected as a union delegate, I respond to the workers who elected me, not to the union structure.
This kind of relationship between us and the environment meant that thousands of people came here when the factory closed. Of course, that encouraged us and also opened up new horizons. People came here for shifts, to contribute with their legal, creative and other skills.”
Events of 2021
July 9, 2021: The Melrose financial fund, having acquired the multinational company GKN in 2018, initiates redundancies for 422 employees at Campi Bisenzio..
September 18, 2021: 40,000 people demonstrate in Florence to demand withdrawal of the dismissals.
September 19, 2021: The Florence court overturns the dismissal proceedings for anti- union behavior.
A reindustrialization plan is drawn up by the factory collective with researchers from the University of Sant’Anna in Pisa.
Drafting of an “anti-delocalization law”
“Yes, there was a real contamination. The spring lasted from July 2021 to December 2021 and cannot be repeated. We were still drawing a full salary and were in a permanent democratic assembly, the factory was virtually in our hands. If the company had brought the work back at that moment, this story would have ended. But the new owner brought a whole new struggle. We suddenly found ourselves in a vacuum: we’re in a permanent assembly, they’re not laying us off anymore, but they’re not bringing our jobs back either.”
“After the GKN-Melrose, was sold to the new owner Francesco Borgomeo on December 23, 2021, we gave this gentleman the chance to submit a business plan. his opportunity was never taken, he never submitted an official plan to any legal body, such as the former MISE (Ministry of Economic Development) and the current MIMIT (Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy). So if you don’t submit anything to the Ministry, no business plan, then it’s clear that everything you say is just a lie.
So, through the social network that had formed, we developed some ideas together with the University of Pisa and others: Conversion to cargo bikes and solar panels. The project is there, the business plan is there. But the company is turning a deaf ear, there was no communication between us and them. After three and a half years, only one solution exists – the state, the region, intervenes to end this story.”
Events of 2021-2022
In November 2021, Francesco Borgomeo was appointed consultant by Melrose with the aim to look for investors to reindustrialize the site.
In January 2022, a framework agreement was signed where Borgomeo would carry out the reindustrialization itself if no investors are found by July 2022.
Let’s Rise Up Tour starts where the collective travels the country and encounters the different realities fighting for convergence.
– 26 March 2022: Double mobilization together with ‘Fridays For Future’, 30,000 people take to the streets.
In November 2022, Borgomeo stops paying salaries.
The mutual aid workers’ association SOMS Insorgiamo is founded to organize microcredits, cultural events and reindustrialization from below. Work begins on a new industrial project.
December 2022: Referendum for a public and socially integrated factory – 17,000 signatures are collected in just a few days
New problems began of an ‘emptiness’.
“The problem now was this emptiness. We present the first industrial plan with the University of Sant’Anna and then a new owner comes along who says “No, no, I’ll take care of it.”
Then it became more complicated, more complex. Now it’s no longer a fight against the bad international financial fund, but suddenly there’s an Italian entrepreneur says he wants to do great things. We are trying to reach an agreement to verify the existence or non-existence of an industrial plan as fast as possible, but instead: emptiness again. A period of waiting. And we have to fill it … It was very clear that this waiting, to today, is intended to let us die.
Forty thousand people on the streets saying no to layoffs – that was over. You have no money, you are not fired, you are nothing. Nothing, we are nothing. Each time we had to invent new actions, in new situations, in new contexts, to connect with the world around us. It wasn’t always easy between us either, coming here every day without pay. We had to keep it all together.
We first tried to set up an aid fund. As a collective we had the resistance fund, which existed before the plant closure. It paid for the costs of the struggle, the megaphone, the banners and so on. It tries to give loans as much as possible. The idea is not to create a charity mechanism, but an interest-free loan that the worker can slowly pay back after the struggle has been won. Then, in October 2022, we founded SOMS Insorgiamo, the mutual aid association, to best regulate our finances. The fund can make mutual reimbursements so that part of it benefits the employees, but it is aid – it cannot replace a salary.
Then money was specifically raised to finance our industrialization project. Crowdfunding raised 170,000 euros, of which 150,000 was the share capital for founding the workers’ cooperative. But there’s another technical complication: the cooperative can’t start working yet, because the moment I join the cooperative, I step back from my old postulate. We have arrived at a total paradox. We don’t know what the other side plans. They have been playing for two and a half years. Supposedly the ownership of the factory changed last spring. We don’t know if the current ownership is driven by political calculations? We can only guess.
Events of 2023-2024
In February 2023, the company is voluntarily liquidated and the government retroactively grants a severance fund valid until end 2023.
The first working class literature festival takes place in April
International tour to Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Barcelona to build a network with European energy communities and ethical supply cooperatives.
Work on a regional legislative proposal for industrial development consortia t to intervene
in cases of relocation to promote the green transition of Tuscan industry
November 2023: during the great flood in Campi Bisenzio, the factory becomes the center of disaster prevention from below.
April 2024: Second workers’ literature festival
May 18: Demonstration with 40,000 participants in Florence
Tent camp outside the Tuscany region, hunger strike
July 12, 2024: Concert to mark the third anniversary of the struggle
Continuation of the Azionato Popolare, shareholders’ meetings
“The hunger strike from June 3-16, was the only moment that really made me angry, because now hope dropped, then it became really critical. After camping outside the Tuscany region for two weeks, we realized that the institutions were not responding. We decided to go on a hunger strike in a vote on a voluntary basis. In this situation, the public had to intervene.”
“We knew that the hunger strike was a very delicate tool. There was a certain risk that communication with our solidarity sector could break down. A hunger strike is usually used by people who are reduced to having no other tools. Then, on the thirteenth day, they told us that the bill would be presented to the committee. So there was a sign from the regional government. The bill should have gone to committee in July, now it is expected to be voted on by December 19th.
Ultimately, the problem with this fight is that it is not easy to simply say many, many words every day .. To maintain credibility, from time to time you have to show the determination to put words into practice.”
“Nothing moves on a political level. Politicians never were able to have a discussion about this proposed law to create an industrial consortium with expropriation.. It would really be a new law, a new instrument for the region to create consortia, both public and private, with the participation of municipalities, to transform industrial areas in crisis. It’s about finding not only a solution for the ex-GKN, but a way forward for other companies in crisis. A precedent is being set for all companies in crisis in the Tuscany region.”
“The immense regional, national, international publicity and solidarity help us, sometimes even too much. If it were less, we could become weak. Now we are prisoners of all these expectations.
Breaks are dangerous in the struggle, we are fast, we have been fighting for three and a half years now. And we are waiting for our wages, for the provisional management of the company and for the decision of the Tuscany region on December 19.”
The slogan for the next few weeks:
RESISTERE ALL’INVERNO PER PRENDERCI LA PRIMAVERA !
(Let’s resist winter to get spring!)
- insorgiamo.org
- insorgiamoconilavoratorigkn
- Insorgiamo.international
