Autonomous Movement of the Turin Railway Workers
Movimento Autonomo di Base (MAB).
From the pamphlet “Workers Autonomy”, Bratach Dubh, 1975.
MAB: Movimento Autonomo di Base (Autonomous Workers’ Movement), of the railway workers in the Turin region.
SFI: Sindacato Ferrovieri Italiani (Italian Railwaymens’ Union), linked to the Comunist Party dominated CGIL.
SAUFI: Sindacato Autonomo Unitario Italiano (Autonomous Unitarian Italian Union), linked to Christian Democrat dominated CISL.
SIUF: Sindacato Italiano Unificato Ferrovieri (Italian Unified Railwaymens’ Union), linked to the UIL (predominantly Socialist Party).
FISAFS: Federazione Italiana Sindacati Autonomi Ferrovieri di Stato (Italian Federation of Autonomous State Railwaymens’ Unions), autonomous union with no direct links with the larger confederations.
Organization of the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus
The present situation is characterized by an alliance between employers, trade unions and reformist parties.
The first are using the help of the unions and so-called parties of the Left in order to continue exploitation, finding a way to make the workers pay the price of the economic crisis through a considerable sum of money paid to the industrialists by the State, thereby allowing them to survive for a few more years. To complete the picture, the parties of the Left, (with the Communist Party in the lead) are asking the working class to make sacrifices in order to save the employers and their servants.
The present characteristic of the unions and reformist parties is therefore that of collaboration with the employers; their most important task is that of extinguishing the spontaneous workers’ movement, suggesting sacrifice and condemning the workers who are disposed to carrying on a tougher form of struggle with the usual slanders (calling them provocateurs). Under these conditions it does not seem to us that the trade union can be used as an instrument of struggle.
The three main unions, the SFI, SAUFI and the SIUF are putting their collaboration into effect by selling out the railway workers through a project of restructuring which means a heavier workload for those employed (increased productivity), with less money (wage blocks), and an increase in unemployment.
These anti-worker objectives are backed up by demagoguery and a strong condemnation of any initiative. In this way they want to get the proposal accepted that management cannot take on wage increases, that to keep up productivity the number of working hours must remain unaltered, that the so-called phenomenon of absenteeism must be fought, and that to control the worker better the process of functional skills and work mobility will have to be re-organized.
Clearly they want to destroy all will to struggle, creating a financial situation which is unsupportable for most, hence the recourse to overtime, giving the bosses the arm of blackmail perfected by the use of the selective mechanism which stops anyone who is not capable and disciplined from getting on (in other words, whoever does not let himself be used and who refuses absolute respect for the bosses).
The autonomous union, FISAFS, is developing a struggle in opposition to the three central trade unions, and claims to be autonomous.
The FISAFS is trying to exploit the rage and discontent of the workers in order to gain a mass adhesion to its corporative and reactionary line. The trade-unionism of this so-called autonomous organization is an ulterior element in retarding the real possibility of workers’ struggle at the base, which is very strong at the present time. The aim of the FISAFS is therefore that of channeling the workers into a corporative logic necessary for the industrialists, political parties, the government and capitalism, in order to consolidate exploitation and make it last.
The FISAFS therefore, in defending the employers’ interests, cannot possibly employ the methods of struggle which characterize and qualify workers’ autonomy. At the level of alliances and political decisions, it becomes impossible for the FISAFS to differentiate itself from the other union organizations who are in opposition to the three central majority-holding unions (for example, the USFI-CISNAL).
True proletarian autonomy is the only possible solution for the continuation of the struggle against the employers and their servants. To do this it is necessary to begin to form Autonomous Workers’ Nuclei. These nuclei, such as those we want to create among the Turin railway workers, are born from within a precise productive reality, and should consider themselves a constant point of reference for the reality outside in the living areas, the land, the schools and so on, and draw them into the struggle.
Beginning from a clear conception of proletarian autonomy, two dangers ever present in sectoral or trade union methods of struggle are eliminated:
a) the bureaucratization of the structure;
b) the tendency towards a corporate vision of the struggle.
The Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus organizes itself autonomously of the political parties and trade unions, in order to better defend the worker as a man. Its perspective of organization and struggle keep in mind the double necessity of imposing the confrontation both at the level of production (wages, contracts, etc.), and at the level of the individual worker’s life (work risks, alienation, necessary links between living area, place of work, school, etc.).
Autonomy is therefore a re-evaluation of the man in the worker, with a clear view of the struggle directed towards safeguarding the conditions which render possible work and life itself.
The Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus
A) Characteristics
– Is an organization which means to distinguish itself from the trade unions including the autonomous versions of such.
– Its autonomy is based on an anti-bureaucratic structure.
– It is based on the elimination of the permanent delegate and the negation of professional representatives.
– All the workers are engaged in the struggle against the employers and their servants.
– This involvement in the struggle is permanent and does not limit itself to the strike periods fixed by the trade unions.
– Each component of the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus considers himself to be in continual struggle against the employers and his servants, in the same way as the latter are continually in struggle against the workers in their attempt to perpetuate exploitation.
– The Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus has no link with trade union ideology or practice, while its anti-employer position qualifies it clearly and without doubt as an instrument which the workers have created for their own emancipation.
– Propaganda activity and struggles directed at obtaining precise results, and the choice of means for the realization of these struggles, are all elements to be clarified by the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus.
– To belong to an Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus is the logical step for all those who consider they have been betrayed by the various trade union organizations and who want to continue the struggle against the State-employer, widening this struggle in a perspective totally different to that of trade union power.
B) Methods
– The repression put into effect by the employers with the help of their servants is constant. It is exercised over us in many ways: diminishing the spending power of wage increases; refusing legitimate increases; putting pressure on the worker to avoid taking on more personnel, increasing work risks; nullifying our struggles through the unions’ politics of recuperation. This repression must be fought with a struggle which is also constant. Therefore: permanent repression, permanent conflict.
– The comrades making up the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus should have a clear idea of the direction the struggle against exploitation should take. The employer strikes the worker as a part of a whole (the productive collectivity), therefore when it strikes him as a railway worker, the company adapts its exploitation to the general situation of production. For this reason a sectoral and corporative struggle does not make sense. The method of workers’ autonomy is based on exporting the struggle, even if the immediate effects (economic and work conditions) remain within the sector of production.
– The method is therefore that of permanent conflict and carrying the struggle beyond the workplace.
– The objectives to be reached outside the workplace are the users of the railway service, especially commuters who must be constantly kept up to date with the evolution of the conflict within the company; and the same for the other sectors of production nearest to that of the railways (airways, road transport, postal services, telephones, contracting sectors, etc.).
– Hence the great importance of information in the autonomous organization of the struggle. Obviously in the beginning the means available for this method of struggle will be inadequate compared to those of the trade union confederacy; however, even having recourse to leafleting, what matters most is working in the right direction, intervening constantly towards the users who must gradually be sensitized to the struggle of the railway workers and our perspectives. The same goes for the collateral sectors with whom it is necessary to make contact, favoring, whenever possible, the birth of other autonomous nuclei which can do the same kind of work.
– In this perspective the strike maintains its validity as a means of struggle, but must he seen critically, not as a means which automatically sets conflict in motion whenever the trade union leadership decides. The strike in that sense becomes an instrument which puts an end to a situation of conflict, and is thus useful to the employers and all those who have an interest in extinguishing concrete struggle.
– Another element against the strike as a means of struggle is the fact that it is an intermittent instrument which the counterpart is always warned about in advance, enabling them to intervene (for example, reducing personnel from goods trains and transferring them to passenger ones).
– Other means exist which can be used alongside the strike, or in the place of it, means which attack the company’s productive output directly and which constitute a very effective threat.
– During a strike the technical procedure is arranged at union meetings. Reading these rules, one is amazed by the care which is taken to avoid any damage to the company. But, in the other direction, what does the company do to try to reduce the exploitation of the workers? All these precautions reduce the effectiveness of the strike as an arm in the attack against the bosses, and the responsibility for all that is also due to the legalism and conservatism of the unions. To hard and constant repression, we must oppose struggle without half measures and without warning: hard and constant struggle.
– The choice of means to be employed in a certain struggle, and the basic direction to be given to the information which iras[sic!] to be constantly circulated towards the exterior, is decided upon by all those who belong to the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus, for which they must meet periodically.
C) Perspectives
– The concrete development of the struggle must be evaluated from time to time in the light of the objective situation, and not serve as a shield for vague and irresolute ideological constructions.
– Wage increase is one of the most important points of the struggle, because it allows the worker a greater capacity for resistance and the possibility of facing other battles which are just as important for his existence. This is not necessarily the main point of the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus, but, for obvious reasons it cannot be considered of secondary importance.
– The struggle for a different organization of work is undoubtedly more interesting, because it indirectly supplements real wages in a way that cannot be taken back by the mechanism of devaluation. These indirect supplements to wages are elements of great value during the course of the conflict. A reduction in working hours, the refusal of mobility or accumulation of duties, total staff coverage, the improvement of working conditions, the modification of rules and working hours for drivers, ticket collectors, etc., the strengthening of installations, lines, locomotives, carriages, etc. are all elements which improve the general situation of the railway worker and can come to be a part of real wages which are very much inferior[sic!] to the sum written on the pay slip.
– The basic perspective in which a longterm struggle could be planned would be that of the base of the workers getting control of management, progressively removing it from the bosses and foremen who find themselves in secure positions with the unions’ approval. In this way an example could be given through a series of proposals re changes in management, and the organizational capacity of the workers, denouncing those responsible for the present disservice at the cost of the passengers and everyone involved.
– Capillary penetration in order to explain the mistaken position of the trade union struggles and their need to collaborate with the company, the impossibility of any change in this situation in the near future, and a return to struggle at the base. Struggle against the trade union structures and bureaucrats, not against union members.
– The final perspective is therefore that of autonomous management of the struggle, both for wages and working conditions, as well as the progressive taking over of management in its totality. Clearly this autonomy of struggle can only develop through a proper evaluation of the unions’ position of collaboration with the employers.
Conclusion
The Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus is an organism of struggle for the defense of the railway workers who mean to affirm the principle of autonomous struggle. For this reason it denies the validity of the trade unions, and denounces their collusion with the system.
On the basis of the principle of autonomy, the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus affirms the need for permanent conflict within the reality of production, and the need to export the essential characteristics of the struggle towards the exterior. The objectives of this communication with the exterior are the users of the railway service and the collateral productive sectors.
The methods necessary for the realization of the defense of those involved and therefore of the whole productive collectivity are chosen in harmony with the principle of autonomy and permanent conflict. The validity of the strike should be examined critically, and a great deal of attention paid to the research for other effective forms of struggle not so easily controllable by the company.
The perspectives of the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus are the constant ones of increasing wages and affecting working conditions, with the aim of safeguarding real wages which is the basis for all concrete possibilities of struggle by the workers.
