by IWU-FI, 16 August 2021
We express our support of the struggle carried out by the Factory Collective of the workers of GKN Driveline in Campi Bisenzio, Florence.
The workers received their dismissal via email from the management committee, Melrose, an English hedge fund. The factory in which has new machinery and a positive financial balance. Every action of the employers’ fund attempts to moving production from Italy to other parts of the world where labour costs less to increase the already high profits. While they were laying off workers, the shareholders were distributing 3 billion euros in dividends.
We, therefore, support every action of the workers’ collective aimed at blocking the bosses’ intention to close the factory. All workers must be united, including those of the subcontractors. GKN produces semi-axles for Stellantis cars, and that the bosses’ attempt at closing the factory shows what their intentions are. Besides the 500 workers of GKN, to whom we should add the other workers of the sub-contractors, around 1000, they could add over 10000 redundancies because of the industrial intentions of Stellantis [1], its managing director Tavares and the Agnelli-Elkan family [2].
We demand the immediate reinstatement of the dismissed workers by taking over the factory until all workers, employees, and technicians can return to work. If the bosses closed the factory, we demand its nationalisation under the management of the real owners of the machinery, the workers.
We call for international solidarity with the workers of GKN Driveline in Florence.
International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)
[1] Stellantis is a multinational group born from the merger of FCA (Fiat & Chrisler) and Peugeot.
[2] The capitalist family owns Stellantis.
