“On July 9, 2021 after receiving a layoff email that left more than 450 families at home, we walked through the gates of the former GKN Driveline in Campi Bisenzio (Florence, Italy), leaving them open to anyone who wanted to enter that gateway, giving us the chance to start a new path together”.
This is the story of the workers’ union of the car-components manifacturer who were laid off by the multinational company (Gkn Automotive) that relocated and sold to a financial company (Melrose group), then to another “investor” who has not invested at all. The more than 150 workers left (out of the 400 initial ones) occupied the factory, formed a mutual aid society and a cooperative to do a workers takeover with the help of the surrounding community and ask for the support of local institutions for a public acquisition of the factory building. They made a business plan to convert the factory to build innovative solar pannels systems to build energy communities and low tech and green mobility.
The SOMS Insorgiamo (Mutalist Solidarity association) was founded last November 2022,coinciding with the siege by the Ex GKN ownership, namely the non-payment of salaries and the workers. It is an association created by the workers of the former GKN to seal the solidarity embrace of the territory and promote together the public and socially integrated factory.
The public / commoning factory: because after two years of permanent assembly and with an absentee ownership, the factory is and has been cared for and maintained by the workers, with the many generous disbursements made from the entire country and from income support made only from public money, but not from public agencies and institutions.
The socially integrated factory: because it is the factory of the Florentine territory and not only, it is the factory of a large extended family that starts in Bari and ends in Pinerolo to cross over into Europe and overseas (where other similar workers’ buyouts or claimed factories exist).
On July 10, 2023, Gff (Gkn for Future) was founded, a cooperative that was born from the crowdfunding (to which the Italian Solidarity Economy Network also contributed) and the union between the Workers’ Collective and those who have supported the struggle in solidarity and the reindustrialization project from the beginning. And yet, as declared by the Workers’ Collectives itself, without public intervention Gkn will not be saved. The ownership of the factory has long been disconnected from any production function. The will is the destruction of the factory’s productive capacity without any other explicit plan.
The bottom-up reindustrialization envisioned by the workers and the popular shareholding are elements of worker, social control and propelling the creation of a renewable energy and light mobility hub in Campi Bisenzio (where the factory is based). They are not intended to and cannot replace public intervention. In the last 2 years the factory has changed ownership twice (from the Melrose fund to Italian entrepreneur Borgonovo’s QF and now in liquidation).
In these first months of 2024 – while still being without pay and no perspective from the ownership and the Government – the Workers’ Collective has worked together with many experts both on the re-industrialisation plan and on a legal framework and urge the Tuscany Region to present and discuss a regional law to give a prospect of a socially integrated factory, including the possibility of a consortium.
“Not only without public intervention there is no saving Gkn. Without public intervention there is also no saving of jobs and ecological transition in automotive. There is no ecological transition and conversion of polluting companies in general. Nor is there any possibility of decommissioning the war industry and reconverting it”, say the workers.
