Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori – Molise, 11 December 2024
On 4 December, three unions, the CGIL, CISL and UIL[1] announced the creation of a coordinating body covering the car industry in the southern Italian regions of Abruzzo and Molise to respond to the „decisive challenges“ facing the two regions.
While it is always a step forward when the workers‘ struggles are brought together, the workers in the automotive and related industries from Molise and Abruzzo need more than regional coordination. To work towards a strategy for the workers of all Stellantis plants in Italy, they should call for the convening of a national assembly of delegates elected by the workers of all the various plants. Then the unity of the struggle needs to be extended to all European and non-European workforces in the industry: The visit of Italian workers to Germany to support the struggle of German workers against the layoffs at Volkswagen is a first important example.
But what are the „decisive challenges“ for the Termoli site?
The crisis of the automobile market in Europe is essentially due to overproduction, which is typical of the capitalist system. The level of income, mass impoverishment caused by exploitation and other causes do not allow sales, so the car market is saturated or drastically reduced, even more so in the case of switching to electric cars, which, although good for the environment, cost 40% more. Even the release of public funds for purchase incentives cannot solve most of the problem: Stellantis recorded a profit of 18 billion euros in 2023 (so it is not a lack of investment funds), and there is no obstacle to production either.
Competition from Chinese national capitalism, including in the electric car (technologically ahead according to SVIMEZ[2]), and from the US, both of which are subsidised with public funds, complicate the picture for European capitalists, who also compete with each other and stop each other from subsidising with public money through vetoes.
Of course, the immediate needs of workers must be addressed immediately: from social support in the event of suspension or dismissal, to immediate resistance to these layoffs, to the demand for the ACC gigaplant[3] in Termoli, which should be built to produce batteries. 2,000 jobs were to have been created there. Construction has now been halted as the Meloni government has blocked EU funding over a dispute with PNRR (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza; Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan, an important part of the EU’s Next Generation EU transformation and recovery plan).
However, it is necessary to break with the continual adaptation to the logic of the bosses which is the strategy of the leaderships of the trade union confederations or by the right-wing trade unions. This logic inevitably leads to dismantling due to overproduction, as well as dangerous competition between workers in different European countries. Even less can the workers of Termoli rely on the theatricality of the parliamentarians of Molise, members of another government that submits to capital, banks and tax evaders. This also applies to workers in other regions.
Prospects
Therefore, it is necessary to combine the immediate and essential demands in the automotive industry to defend jobs and wages today with an anti-capitalist platform and a broader perspective.
This should start with a layoff freeze with redistribution of work with equal pay for all; Nationalisation without compensation of the major shareholders, from Stellantis to Volkswagen to all the major car companies that are restructuring, with the introduction of a new industrial plan under workers‘ control.
The offensive of the companies at the European level, which also affects the Termoli and Atessa plants, must be met with an equal and opposite force and therefore the unity of automotive and related workers throughout Italy and even beyond national borders, with radical forms of struggle, even up to the occupation of all the plants. With resistance and real strikes, i.e. those that really hit the capitalists’ profits. Even the US trade unions have been able to achieve more than the European trade unions in the automotive sector.
History teaches us, as in the great struggles of workers and students in the 1960s and 1970s, that only when the bosses are afraid of losing everything can a breach be made, not only to defend the immediate conditions, but also to win great achievements.
Editor’s Notes
[1] The three traditional trade union federations of Italy, originally affiliated with the Communist Party (CGIL), the Socialist Party (UIL) and the Christian Democratic Party (CSIL).
[2] SVIMEZ (Associazione per lo Sviluppo dell ́Industria nel Mezzogiorno; Association for the Promotion of Industry in Southern Italy is a non-governmental organisation founded in 1949 that initiates studies on the situation in the South, publishes regular reports and makes proposals for bridging the gap between North and South in Italy. (The regions of Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia and two southern provinces of Lazio belong to the south; about 34% of Italy’s population live here.)
[3] ACC (Automotive Cells Company) is the battery cell joint venture of Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and Total Energies.