In Genoa, former Ilva workers who are demanding guarantees about their own future and the future of the plant where they work have received, in response, a repressive reaction from the Meloni government: tear gas and barricades used to obstruct a rightful workers’ protest.
The workers, who have been mobilised since Monday, have obtained an initial result through their struggle: the resumption of the arrival in Genoa of galvanised steel coils from the Taranto plant, whose blockage ordered by the government had in fact brought the entire department to a standstill. The workers’ picket was called off following a statement from the Ministry assuring the resumption of supplies.
The government’s plan aimed to reduce production in Genoa, shut down the galvanised strip line, and propose wage supplementation schemes and “training courses” to the workers.
This is, quite clearly, a strategy aimed at the gradual dismantling of the plant. We firmly support every action taken by the workers to resist and defeat this perspective.
The striking workers have in fact confirmed that the organised struggle of the working class remains indispensable in defending the interests of workers and the subordinate classes.
The case of former Ilva fully expresses the class character of state intervention in this decadent phase of capitalism in our country. Production is currently managed by Acciaierie d’Italia under extraordinary administration, a condition that has lasted for almost two years. The government is not working to build a sustainable plant capable of meeting the needs of the population and the workers employed there, but rather to dismantle the most costly plants and departments, with the aim of guaranteeing yet another private actor an immediate profit.
The workers’ protest is fully legitimate, including in its most confrontational and determined forms. It is the workers who keep production running and who create the entire wealth of the company who must have the final word on the plans for former Ilva.
As the Communist Front, we express our political and militant solidarity with the struggles and our support for a solution that guarantees all contractual and employment safeguards, in Genoa as in all other plants, with the indispensable involvement of the workers in the discussion over their future.
Only struggle brings results!
We stand with the former Ilva workers in mobilisation!
Let us build together the political class organisation capable of leading workers’ struggles!
