My name is Sebastiano. I’m a comrade from Bergamo, a worker of the Dalmine steel plant, member of the Slai Cobas for the Class Union.
It is not a coincidence that this area of the
country, along with Brescia, is the most affected by the CoviD19
pandemic in Italy, where it is difficult not to have some workmates
or family members who are dead or sick from the coronavirus.
What we are experiencing on our skin is not a tragic fate but, on the
contrary, the proof of very specific responsibilities.
It is very common here the feeling that someone will have to pay, and
many among the workers say: we will give them the bill.
But the problem is that the conditions for this to
happen must be built right now. What is happening should make workers
and proletarians aware that the virus is a product of the capitalists
and their production system, based on profits, not health, a virus of
Capital, which made the living and social conditions and the health
facilities themselves a favourable terrain for the contagion.
The stats on Bergamo show that it is the area with
the highest workers concentration in Italy, due to the huge number of
factories: 4.1 plants per km2
while the national average is 1.6.
The result is that coronavirus patients are not
9,000 as official stats say, but 100,000 as estimated by the
secretary of the federation of general practitioners, while the
numbers of deaths for CoviD19 are not 4500. The real number are
double the official one (including a high number of those who were
quickly buried, with not even a swab test), as the mainstream local
newspaper “L’Eco di Bergamo” had to admit.
But these stats still hide the massacre of the
elderly, a decimated generation, 1 in 10 are the dead in the nursing
homes, deliberately left to themselves, expendable, by age, because
they are no longer productive, a massacre that cries out for revenge.
The health workers took up a tremendous challenge when they were sent
to thwart barehanded the impact of the virus by criminal authorities
and are paying a very high price, as shown by the appalling
progression of deaths among doctors, while it is no coincidence that
still today we miss data on how many nurses and health workers died
in this massacre.
We recognize the bravery and effort of these workers but they must
not be heroes, according to the rhetoric of the masters and their
State, which means you have to work in any condition, like soldiers
sent to the trenches.
While it is important they continue doing their
work it needs they fight right now during the emergency to be given
the masks, personal protective equipment and swab tests, to bring to
light responsibilities and to lay the ground so that it is not
everything as before in the health system at the end of the
emergency.
This must be done with the contribution of workers, with the
organized action of workers, not leaving the politicians to ride this
serious problem (as they are doing these bastards of the Democratic
Party in these days who speak that we must return the health system
to the public sector)
We speak to the logistics workers, in the
warehouses where our activity is concentrated, and those in the food
factories which have in common to be infiltrated and controlled by
the cooperative system.
Even if there were many small episodes of
micro-conflict to get protective equipment, our activity is for
rebellion, because it is not possible to guarantee safe conditions
from contagion as long as the work organization is geared to handle
so many wares as possible for the profits of the mass distribution.
We say that in a sector where dictatorship reigns,
where there is a condition of new-slavery, that by definition does
not allows human conditions, there is no alternative to rebellion.
The warehouses that stopped showed the only
possible way: rebellion inside the warehouse is the solution!
For this is our work as comrades toward the
workers.
These days everyone is talking and rightly condemning the role of the
masters and their association “Confindustria”, which prevented
from establishing “red zones” in front of the pandemic outbreak,
which is an important aspect, but why did they not see what happened
in the factories the first three weeks of March?
While “Confindustria” popularized the
video-clip “Bergamo is running” to reassure international
customers and continue their business, the owners of the big
multinational companies based in Bergamo, Brembo and Tenaris at the
head, well-knowing the impact the virus would have on factories
workers, since they have already seen it in their plants in China
months before, instead of protecting the workers, they tried to keep
the factories open in the first weeks of March, passing through the
official unions the message that we were due to work (for example on
March 6 the management and representatives of the mainstream unions
started a procedure to continue working even under the epidemic
risk).
These factories remained open until the high
absenteeism after the first serious infections and the weight of the
spontaneous strikes that were growing led them to opt for the stop.
Despite the risks, they tried to do as much as
possible to complete the urgent deliveries.
The same happened, in a chain, in all medium and
small companies, as they did not want to stop above all under the
uncertainty they were facing, when working also meant continuing to
make money.
In Bergamo, we have about 173,000 workers employed
in companies with more than 20 employees.
The situation in the factories now is that a large part of workers
have understood they have been exposed to a very serious risk.
Someone somehow could protect himself against the CoVid19, others
have finally understood that masters do not care about our health,
their profits come first.
The proof is our workmates who died after being infected in the
factory while the bosses hid the data on virus positive people and
made everyone work without protective equipment, all in the same
sheds and locker rooms.
This is the true face of exploitation: masters and workers are not on
the same boat.
If we have understood this, we cannot go back
We have to take another step together.
We have to spend weeks before we back to work.
We must put all possible effort into building a collective path and
we must think of and do it right now.
The example of spontaneous strikes showed us the way we have to go.
When workers mobilize without the leash of the official unions, they
worry and scare the masters and their government.
The workers are the those who make the whole economy move, never as
in these days the strength we can have became evident, if we organize
ourselves and become conscious that we must break down this system.
So call to the workers and people’s masses to
look at what really happened and get organized, out of and against
the official trade unions.
What do we want? Everything!
What we need now in Bergamo is the revolt of
workers and masses and to start building it now, fighting now in all
possible and imaginable forms and ways.
What do we want? Everything!
Your system, your power, your state and government
have failed, have killed our loved ones, continue doing it, and will
continue so, but we drew experience from all this and we will give
you the bill to pay, and it will be high!
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