Workers at the occupied GKN car parts factory at Campi Bisenzio in Italy, near Florence (Firenze), have made an international appeal to support their plan to launch a co-operative producing cargo bikes and solar panels. The struggle they have been waging since 2021 is now under threat, with workers facing the sack and eviction on 1 January 2024. Update: the campaign seems to be suggesting that they have successfully pushed back the deadline; but it is not clear. More soon.
The workers' statement is below, above links to more information and to actions you can take.
GKN and the asset-stripping corporation that took it over in 2021, Melrose Industries, are British-based.
The workers have issued an appeal to supporters internationally to help them raise 1 million euros for a co-operative that will keep the factory open: more than €315,000 had come in before Christmas. Organisations are asked to buy 500 euro shares, and individuals to signify their readiness to contribute 100 euros and club together with others.
Details of how to take part are on the workers' Insorgiamo (Let's Rise Up) website.
The co-op will implement a plan, worked out with researchers and engineers, to shift production away from car parts to alternative technologies that help address the climate crisis: cargo bikes and solar panels.
If that happens it will take forward the GKN workers' efforts to unite their struggle for their livelihoods with the global fight for a just transition to a post-fossil-fuel future. There have been demonstration with tens of thousands of participants, discussions and community engagement, plus links built between the workers and the climate movement.
A real alternative to capitalist fossil-fuel production can't be created in just one factory - but the GKN workers are fighting to create an example of what is possible. Please support them, and spread word of their fight!
More information
The 8-minute film by Reel News, released just before Christmas, summarises the story of the GKN struggle.
See the workers' Facebook page and Instagram account for updates.
The People & Nature blog links to a range of articles about the struggle.
What can be done
Contact the workers at colletivo.gkn.firenze@gmail.com
Attend the New Years' Eve event at the factory if you can, for a huge concert – and to barricade the factory. They’ve fought off redundancies before; with the same support, they can do it again.
They need to raise 1 million euros in shares by December 31st! Shares start from 100 euros, and already they have raised 315,000 euros (mid-December update). You can find details of how to take part here.
Know of a cooperative or progressive group who would be interested in buying the cargo bikes or solar panels?
Share information about the struggle with your trade unions/branches, environmental organisations, community groups, comrades, colleagues, friends and family, and everyone who wants to see a global just transition.
Help spread their story internationally, by offering to translate materials into other languages.
If you have the technical expertise, to look at the production plan to help improve it.
The workers' statement:
“To our entire solidarity network: towards the zero hour”
This statement was published on the GKN workers’ website in Italian. This English version was published by UK group Notes from Below.
The statement in Italian refers to "hour X". Notes from Below explains: "In the Italian, the ‘x hour’, a partisan slang reference to the moment in which the PCI was to call on workers to prepare for the revolution."
1. Layoffs have resumed. Our time is running out. Any solidarity activity or support for GKN must now bear this in mind.
2. The zero hour, as of today is 1 January, 2024: the layoffs will be final, and GKN will be permanently transformed into a site for property speculation.
3. There is no third way: an empty GKN plant or a socially integrated factory. Either a symbol that “they” win, one way or another, sooner or later. Or an example that, here and now, “we can”. We’re on the edge of the abyss, where we either take flight or fall.
4. We have no choice; this is our workplace. We will try to resist to the end. You have a choice: either just take note of how things have turned out, or actively engage with a concrete example striving for new power relations for the trade union movement, social justice, and the climate movement.
5. We are aware of the context. We face global escalation of war and a massacre in Gaza. We are not the only business crisis, nor the only exemplary dispute. And we certainly don’t compete to be more visible or more urgent than everything else. We are just a tiny part of the whole. But we want to point out that, here and now, this tiny part has reached a conclusion. And now the decision must be made about what this conclusion will be. How important this conclusion is for overall power relations is for you to evaluate and decide.
6. Communicating the different stages of the struggle is not simple. The opposition has equipped itself over time to pollute every narrative, confuse it, entangle it, and technicalize it. We must ask for extra attention from our supporters: follow our social media, join the GKN info groups on WhatsApp (write to +3478646481) or subscribe to our Telegram channel: t.me/infocollettivodifabbricagkn. On
7. Bottom-up reindustrialisation is a tool of struggle, and the timing of this struggle is vital. All activities related to cargo-bikes, the photovoltaic plan, and popular shareholding must either accelerate now or become useless.
8. We have no more time. We are no longer able to respond to individual proposals, invitations or activities. November is almost over, and December is a month made short by the holidays. We must drastically cut down on meetings, calls, initiatives. We are launching an Insorgiamo tour around the zero hour, to Rome, Milan, Padua, Naples, Turin. And on the international level: Vienna, Barcelona, perhaps Berlin, perhaps London. We ask all supporters to converge, to rise up on the dates that will be indicated.
9. The roadmap towards zero hour must be characterized by moments of “high increasing convergence”: the Insorgiamo tour; a general strike on November 17 in Florence; on December 2 and 3 “we will be a choir”; and we call all of you again to GKN, on December 16th for a day of struggle. Keep yourselves free for actions throughout December to prevent zero hour, which as of today is set for December 31 at 00:00.
10. In recent days, the issues of climate justice, social justice, mutualism, the socially integrated factory, care for the territory and the community, and the need for convergence or unity all seem to have come together in a few hours in Campi Bisenzio. It all seems apparently random. In truth, it is a sign that we have long been preparing for this time that is coming towards us. That we have made choices. Power relations are overwhelming, the context can overwhelm us, but you always have a margin of choice. You can’t choose when it rains, but you can choose what kind of person you will be in the rain. Let’s choose not to fail.
Insorgiamo [Let Us Rise Up]