hydrarchist writes...here are some documents related to the series of wildcat strikes which broke out in the transpoirt sector in Italy in december. The strikes shut down Milan, Brescia and numerous other cities in what is a struggle not only over pay but also working conditions. The main trade unions have been run out of the tramworkers (autoferrotranvieri) depots to be replaced largely by grassroots trade unions such as the CUB, COBAS and SULT.

Efforts to build support for them have also involved a reflection on how 'precari' can make conflicts in the transport sector their own but makeing demands for free transpoirtation and 'social tariffs' rather than abstract 'solidarity'. Here are some libertarian tracts produced on these questions.


[January 12, 2004]


Let’s Block Everything…


…All of it

The transit workers in struggle in all the cities of Italy are not alone. From Paris to Bucharest, from Los Angeles to Rome wildcat strikes, city blockades and riots are spreading over the entire planet, a sign of a widespread impatience with the living conditions imposed on all the exploited. When the masters have less and less to concede, pressed in a crisis that is not a crisis but the normal functioning of the economy, when insecurity and fear become the social norm, there is no longer any distinction of category that holds. When there is nothing to mediate, all that remains to the unions – long since pledged to guarantee the resignation of the workers to business and government – is to put on the uniform of the police, as they did in Milan two years ago when they handed the names of the participants in the blockade of the station during the strike of railroad cleaners over to the forces of order.

If the transit workers have caused the wildcat strike to re-emerge in our land with so much clamor, the road blockades and the conflicts of the Alitalia workers in Fiumicino have shown that this contagion is quick to extend itself. If the transit workers have stopped up the cities, the inhabitants of Scanzano have given evidence of how the radioactivity of the economy assaults everyone, in every aspect of life.

In an infinite game of returns, it is reality itself that rediscovers and re-actualizes some old methods of struggle and designs the demolition of categorical distinctions and methods of arrangement. Thus, many in the cities blockaded in December, who caught a glimpse of the possibilities of an existence no longer subordinated to production, correspond to the commuters of Abruzzo who block the motorway and refuse to consent to the increase in tolls. The temporary workers of McDonald’s in Paris who have seized and held offices and equipment for months, and the transit workers of Los Angeles who paralyzed the metropolis for thirty-two consecutive days correspond the “exuberant ones” of Alfa Romeo who occupy the tracks in Milan.

This is why the transit workers are not alone: all around there are ears ready to take in their suggestions, and complicit mouths quick to whisper it anew. When the unions and the rules decided by the masters are jumped beyond and widespread insubordination makes its way, there are no longer temps and guaranteed employees, railway workers and unemployed, laborers, transit workers or stewardesses. It is an entire world that has had enough and begins to rediscover the desire and the joy of taking its life back in hand and rebelling.

In solidarity on foot

c/o Porfido documentation center – via Tarino 12/c Torino, Italy

THE MEANING OF A STRIKE

What Is happening in the city? It is simple: some workers have finally decided to react to the hateful exploitation to which all workers are subjected every day.

Starting from the wildcat strike of last December 11, public transit workers have courageously rebelled against the arrogance of the bosses and against a business logic, private and public, the only aim of which is profit and that claims today to assimilate any human activity into itself.

But that’s not all. The transit workers sent the unions to the devil, denouncing their connivance with the owners. They have refused to refused to delegate their demands to others, because they have understood the delegation is a swindle and that the time has come to self-organize through assemblies, also unauthorized, in order to autonomously discuss and decide the methods and times of their struggle.

Finally, the transit workers have given a gift that is as precious as it is unexpected: they have shown us in deeds the wildcat (i.e., illegal) strike is possible once again. If the rules and laws are not established by the majority of the “sovereign people” (the great fiction upon which representative democracy claims to stand), but by a minority of the privileged who control political, economic and media power, then legality is fine and pretty imposture, and the real struggle (not the sham of fake conflict on the part of the union bureaucrats) can only transgress the rules. It is no accident that the authorities have attempted to intimidate the workers with police measures (these, indeed, terroristic!) like the mobilization [to keep the transit running].

“Chaos Risk” has been the headline on some newspapers. And if “chaos” were not a risk, but an opportunity? The only concrete opportunity for us to stop, at least for a moment, and reflect on our way of living, and above all on the social relationships that habituate us day after day to the fear of precariousness and to resignation.

For these reasons we greet the new strike of the transit workers with gratitude. And we hope that their practice of struggle becomes irresistibly contagious.


In solidarity on foot

AGAINST THE BUSINESS OF TRANSPORT – FOR FREE PUBLIC MEANS

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE WILDCAT

1. Providing oneself with two tickets. Folding up a used one of them and driving it with the other into the slot of the stamping machine in a way that blocks it.

2. Using any tube of rapid gripping glue (optimal liquid steel) with a thin neck and introducing the glue thoroughly into the slot.

3. A more improvised method is that of working chewing gum into the slot and pushing it in a bit with a hairpin.

4. Organizing in groups is still the most effective method putting the machines out of order and for spreading subversive ideas at the same time.

ADVICE TO THE ELDERLY:

not losing time stamping you don’t lose a place to sit

In solidarity on foot"