GKN sit-in Festival: ‘the exploiters need us, but we don’t need them’

By Hilary Horrocks

Five thousand people joined a march in Campi Bisenzio, near Florence, on Saturday evening 6 April, organised by the sacked workers at the huge GKN factory, who have been fighting for two-and-a-half years to keep their workplace open under public ownership and workers’ control.

Shop stewards from the ex-GKN workers’ collective at Campi Bisenzio, Florence, leading 5000 marchers last weekend. The large banner bears their slogan, Insorgiamo (Let Us Rise Up)

The dispute and the occupation of the factory continues, since an Italian labour court ruled against the final attempt to dismiss the 400 GKN employees just before the deadline of 1 January this year. Now, though, the workers are not receiving any wages.

The demonstration at the weekend was called by the workers’ Collective in response to an attack on the occupied factory by the management, the most likely organisers of a break-in in the early hours of the morning last week to cut off electricity to the plant.

The Collective was set up in 2017. In July 2021 Melrose, the owners of GKN, announced that they planned to shut down the factory and sell it off to property developers. Since then, the Collective has become a nucleus for a campaign that has won wide support in the climate justice movement and in the community.

The ex-GKN Collective has argued forcefully and convincingly, with the participation of academic researchers, for a just transition away from the factory’s former role of turning out car axles, towards the production of socially useful items such as cargo bikes and solar panels, vital in the battle to save the climate.

Italian car workers fight for alternative green production plan

Workers at a car parts factory in Italy, closed by the multinational GKN corporation, have made an international appeal to support their plan to launch a co-op producing cargo bikes and solar panels.

Climate activists’ action in support of the GKN workers. See “About the photo”, below

The factory, at Campi Bisenzio near Florence (Firenze), has been occupied since July 2021, when Melrose Industries, the asset-stripping corporation that took over GKN, announced it would close. Other GKN plants were also junked.

Negotiations with a possible new owner failed earlier this year. The 185 workers who remain at Campi Bisenzio are now threatened with the sack, and eviction from the building, on 1 January 2024.

They have issued an appeal to international supporters to help them raise 1 million euros for a co-operative that will keep the factory open: more than €315,000 has come in so far. Organisations are asked to buy 500 euro shares, and individuals to signify their readiness to contribute 100 euros and club together with others.

Details of how to take part are on the Insorgiamo (We’ll Rise Up) web site.

Belarus: oil refinery trade union leaders arrested

Two trade union leaders from the giant Naftan oil refinery in Belarus were arrested on Friday, human rights organisations said.

Olga Britikova addressing a mass meeting at the Naftan refinery in 2020

Olga Britikova, former head of the independent trade union organisation at the factory, and Aleksandr Kukharenok, a member of the strike committee formed in 2020, were detained by the OMON security police.

Legal cases have been opened against both activists for political offences under the Criminal Code (Article 2.361, making calls for sanctions and other actions that threaten national security).

Initial reports said that Kukharenok’s wife has also been arrested. The pair have young children.

Olga Britikova was “one of the leaders of the protest movement at Naftan after the 2020 elections”, the Zerkalo web site reported. “It was Olga who conveyed the workers’ demands to the authorities and factory management.”

In August 2020, a letter signed by more than 3000 Naftan workers called on Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenka to resign and for new elections.

Belarusian ‘railway partisans’ face death penalty

The Belarusian regime is threatening “railway partisans”, arrested for sabotaging signalling equipment to disrupt the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the death sentence.

From left: Dzianis Dzikun, Aleh Malchanau and Dzmitry Ravich. From the Viasna site

Criminal investigators have passed a file on the first three cases – Dzmitry Ravich, Dzianis Dzikun and Aleh Malchanau of Svetlagorsk – to court prosecutors.

The state Investigations Committee says they could face the death penalty, although lawyers say there is no basis for that in Belarusian law.

On Saturday 23 July, Belarusians will protest at their country’s embassy in London, in support of the Svetlagorsk defendants and eight others arrested on terrorism charges.

Ravich, Dzikun and Malchanau were detained in Svetlagorsk on 4 March this year – a week after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine – along with Alisa Malchanau, Aleh’s daughter, and Natalia Ravich, Dzmitry’s wife, who were released a few days later. 

Kazakhstan, ten years after the Zhanaozen massacre: oil workers’ fight to organise goes on

Ten years after police massacred striking oil workers at Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan, human rights organisations and trades unionists are demanding an international inquiry into the killings.

Even now, the number of victims is unknown. State officials admit that 16 were killed and 64 injured on 16 December 2011 – but campaigners say there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, more.

The initial killings, by police who fired into a peaceful, unarmed crowd, were followed by a three-day reign of terror in Zhanaozen, in the oil-rich Mangistau province in western Kazakhstan, and nearby villages.

Defendants at the 2012 trial of Zhanaozen protesters

The torture and sexual violence used against detainees should also be investigated by an independent international commission, campaigners say.

Although a handful of police officers were tried for “exceeding their powers”, and a detention centre boss briefly jailed, the Kazakh government has refused to say who ordered the shootings.

The Zhanaozen shootings ended an eight-month strike by the town’s oil workers, one of the largest industrial actions ever in the post-Soviet countries.

Oil workers and their families had demanded better pay and conditions, and the right to organise independent trade unions, at Ozenmunaigaz, a production subsidiary of the national oil company Kazmunaigaz, and contracting firms.

Let’s recognise care as a social good

The campaign for a National Care Service in Scotland: a contribution to a discussion. By HILARY HORROCKS (Edinburgh trades union council delegate)

Health is a devolved matter in the not-so-United Kingdom, and that has allowed successive Scottish governments to bring in progressive measures that are missing in England, such as abolition of prescription charges for everyone and free personal care for the elderly.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) government certainly sought to distance itself from Westminster during the first stages of the Covid pandemic, when it seemed to follow scientific advice more carefully, and kept the public better informed with daily briefings by the First Minister.

Care workers joined a lobby of Edinburgh Council in September against the closure of four care homes in the city. Photo by Craig Maclean

Between the first and second waves of Covid last year the virus was just about eliminated in Scotland – but like Westminster, the government at Holyrood failed to use the summer to bring in mitigating measures to reduce infection. So in the autumn, the return of schools and universities, coupled with the loosening of restrictions, led to a rise in cases similar to England’s.

Mask wearing has remained a legal requirement in Scotland, including for all secondary school pupils, and is generally well observed – but cases remain worryingly high, particularly in poorer areas.

Here, as in England and Wales, the terrible toll of deaths in care homes at the beginning of the pandemic brutally exposed the disastrous policy of freeing up NHS beds by transferring elderly hospital patients to care homes with no proper testing.

Social care is up against the profiteers

By STUART CARTER (mental health worker and long-time union activist)

Three quarters of us will need some form of social care during our lifetime. In September the government claimed they were tackling the crisis in social care, by increasing National Insurance contributions by 1.25 % from 1 April 2022, thereby raising an extra £12 billion a year. They also made some changes to the thresholds for receiving free social care or having to make contributions to your social care.

Governments have been talking about social care reform for the past 20 years but have done next to nothing. The Dilnot report, commissioned by the coalition government in 2011, made some proposals similar to the present ones but more generous and far-reaching – but it was quietly ignored.

Successive governments have buried their heads in the sand.

Meanwhile cutbacks, especially in local authority budgets, have seen spending per person on social care drop 7.5% in real terms in the decade up to 2019/20. Progressive privatisation, that began in the 1970s, has resulted in 90% of social care now being delivered by the private and independent sector.

Increasingly, healthcare is viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold on the market, that is controlled by private companies seeking profit.

The graph shows the number of deaths of care home residents in England and Wales, each week between 14 March 2020 and 2 April 2021. The dark blue columns are deaths from Covid-19, the light blue, deaths from all other causes. The Office for National Statistics published the graph, and commented: “The sharpest rise in Covid-19 deaths occurred in wave one, but overall a higher proportion of deaths involved Covid-19 in wave two.” Please see the ONS web site for more details

Council-run care homes and council employed home helps are things of the past. However the COVID pandemic, which has killed 40,000 nursing and care home residents, has focused public attention on the state of social care.

Social care workers

One and a half million people work in the social care sector providing residential or home care. The average wage is £9.50 an hour and the majority of workers are on the minimum wage. There is no standardisation of training, terms and conditions are poor and there is a very low level of union organisation.

There is a great deal of instability, with many care homes going bust each year or being taken over by bigger companies. In home care, the workers are given limits on time they can spend with each client and many don’t get paid for their travel time between visits.