On the night of 9 October the picket line at the gates of the Lin Weidong leather goods factory in Seano (Province of Prato) was attacked with iron bars by at least half a dozen hooded thugs. “Next time we’ll shoot you,” the attackers shouted as they ran off after the beating. Four people were injured, two workers and two members of Sudd-Cobas grassroots union which had called the “the strike days”. All needed hospital treatment. In response, workers throughout the “fashion district” which encircles Prato and Florence, spontaneously walked off the night shift. The leaflet which follows has been written by the comrades of Battaglia Comunista, Italian affiliate of the ICT, and translated by the CWO, its British affiliate, into English for distribution in both English and Italian at the demonstration of the striking workers last Sunday evening (13 October) which was supported by 1,500-2,000 workers.

This is not the first time we have had to report on the use of mafia-style thuggery by Italian bosses against (mainly migrant) workers who are demanding no more than their so-called legal rights under Italian law (see e.g. A Victim of the Bosses, A Victim of Capitalism) and certainly won’t be the last. Today under the right wing regime of Meloni, the state is doing all it can to criminalise migrants whilst at the same time bosses use this criminalisation to step up their inhuman exploitation. It's a highly profitable business especially in the Italian fashion industry (worth €24 billion to the Italian GDP). Globalisation works in many ways, and more than thirty years ago, instead of transporting the industry to China, the Italian state agreed to import Chinese capital and labour to the so-called “alternative fashion district” to the north of Florence. This allowed luxury textiles and leather goods under the labels of Gucci,Dolce e Gabbana, etc., to be sold with the prestigious “Made in Italy” tag. However, even this was not enough to sate their thirst for profit. Instead of paying Italian and Chinese workers, the bosses of all nationalities started to use migrant labour from South Asia and Africa working well outside the legal norms because they are so easy to blackmail. As is the case here where the workers are from Pakistan and the bosses, Chinese. As the leaflet hints the state is complicit in this in the introduction of the new “Security Bill” which penalises peaceful protests and even makes it illegal to sell a SIM card to a migrant worker who has no legal status in Italy. The more insecure the workers the more the exploitation racks up.

The three big union federations in Italy, although organising many migrants in the more traditional manufacturing sectors in certain regions, have tended to ignore other sectors like logistics and agriculture and, as in this case, in textiles and leather luxury goods. This means that the defence of migrant workers has been taken up by a whole array of the so-called “rank and file”, “combative” or “grassroots” unions, like the local Sudd-Cobas in Prato. We don’t doubt the sincerity and courage in their efforts but this tale of misery and violence will continue to be told if nothing more than defence of workers in one sector is all that is achieved. As it was, the 13 October demonstration was not supported by the other grassroots unions as we have seen in many other struggles across Italy (though the General Confederation of Labour, the CGIL, the biggest traditional union federation in Italy, was there, but only on the hunt for possible members to make up for the ground they have lost in this sector). With a system in crisis as deep as the world capitalist system finds itself, workers face only greater exploitation whilst wealth accumulates in the pockets of an ever smaller number of capitalists who control the system. The working class is a class of migrants which has built the “wealth of nations”, a wealth that resides with those who run those nations. It is time we recognised that our strength is in our collective consciousness of our particular class interests – and this means coming together, as the leaflet indicates, as a global political force that is capable of ushering in a different society based on real human need, and not the profits of a few.

Solidarity with Workers in Struggle, to Overthrow Capitalism!

Once again the bosses are sending gangs of thugs to intimidate and crush the strike of "their" workers, mostly from Pakistan, in the fashion district of Prato.

After the ferocious struggles of the past few years – when the State has repeatedly shown its true nature, by repressing striking workers, union members and supporters – many companies, owned by Chinese immigrants, have applied the national category contract, starting with respect for working hours and regular payment of wages. But some sectors of the bosses continue to impose slave-like conditions: 12-hour work schedules seven days a week, and more, plus starvation wages, if and when they are paid. Against all this, the workers are striking, occupying the factory gates, which is why they were attacked by the bosses' police, along with Sudd-Cobas union members leading the strike

It is clear that such an act is part of the climate of intimidation that the bourgeoisie imposes on anyone who tries to raise their head. Capitalism everywhere is in deep crisis, so even the simple respect of national contracts is considered by the employers (whether Italian or Chinese) an intolerable limit to the slave-like exploitation imposed on a workforce, which is particularly easy to blackmail, such as immigrant workers.

But individual employers only do, on a “small scale”, what the bourgeois state does on a large scale. The reintroduction of the “Security Bill”, with the tightening of the laws that repress social protests – starting with workers’ protests – is yet another demonstration of this.

Our class solidarity therefore goes to the workers in struggle, and to all who have been hit by the employers’ gangsterism.

At the same time, we need to stress that the path of trade unionism, even that which seeks to be more radical, is a road that leads nowhere, especially in an era of deep crisis of capitalism, when the possibilities for reformism and bargaining are reduced more and more every day; when the crisis itself accelerates the imperialist conflict and the wars that derive from it. Beyond any immediate results that it might win, trade unionism does not pose the problem of overcoming capitalism, in fact it accepts it, and in this way it prevents the development of a coherently anti-capitalist consciousness.

This does not mean that the class should not fight for its immediate needs: on the contrary, the struggle must go on but beyond the trade union horizon, to begin to place itself in the perspective of overthrowing this society founded on exploitation, oppression and war, a wider perspective that only comes from the creation of the revolutionary party.

We fight for the programme of the revolutionary conquest of communism to circulate again in the class, and for the work of building the party to be strengthened, the only real tools to fight, once and for all, the violence of the bosses and to overcome the capitalist system.

Solidarity with those attacked by the violence of the bosses, for the overthrow of capitalism!