Florence, how to save a factory in the desert of industrial policy: the debate on the GKN case

ROME – The Inequalities and Diversity Forum joined the national demonstration of Gkn Collective on March 25 in Florence to support male and female workers, who have been without pay for months, who have drawn up a plan that brings together work and ecological transition, and are still waiting for answers about their future. At the headquarters of the Bass Foundation, tomorrow 20 March, at 18, there will be the presentation of the plan. On 9 July 2021, the GKN factory in Florence suddenly closed with a collective dismissal notified by email to the 430 male and female workers. The same day the workers cross the gates and set up a permanent garrison. From the unknowns born in those months and multiplied in the following two years, male and female workers developed the idea of ​​regaining possession, from the workers’ point of view, of the ability to propose and practice an alternative solution to dismissal, through a reindustrialization plan of the former -GKN, which aims at the ecological transition of the automotive sector and at the integration of the factory with the territory.

Deindustrialization and global changes. The ex-GKN episode therefore takes place at the intersection between the deindustrialization that affects mature capitalism economies and the global transformations affecting the automotive sector, in the face of technological change and the environmental and climate crisis. The debate at Bass Foundation will start from the presentation of the reindustrialization plan presented in March 2021 and recently published, as e-books freely downloadable from Feltrinelli Foundation. It will be an opportunity to discuss with the sympathetic researchers the recent evolution of the dispute with the liquidation by the new ownership, the elaboration of further and more in-depth alternatives by the Reindustrialisation Group, and the convening of a new march in defense of workers’ wages and the future of the factory for 25 March in Florence, to which the Inequality and Diversity Forum has convincedly adhered. The collective has also launched a crowdfunding on Produzioni dal Basso to support the reindustrialization plan.

Tomorrow’s debate. The discussion, which will be held at the Foundation’s headquarters in Rome, in via della Dogana Vecchia 5, will be moderated by the journalist Davide De Luca. In addition to the solidarity researchers who contributed to the elaboration of the plan, the economists Valeria Cirillo (University of Bari) and Patrizia Luongo (Save the Children Italy And Inequalities and Diversity Forum) and Vittorio Cogliati Dezza (Inequalities and Diversity Forum). A connection from Campi Bisenzio of the Collettivo di Fabbrica is planned. Admission is free while seats last. Registration required HERE. The live stream will be broadcast on the page Youtube of ForumDD.