Piano b – il manifesto , 5 marzo 2008
Quando la lotta paga. Una mobilitazione operaia ferma la speculazione
Un anno di picchetti e battaglie legali per ottenere la dichiarazione di fallimento, propedeutica a trovare a new buyer for the foundry in Bologna. Starring 60 workers and Fiom, who foiled the attempt of the 'master' Fochi maximizing the value of the land, to liquidate the company and sell the plants.
Bologna, Barrio Santa Viola. The fight is charged. A few days Sabiem workers have stopped going every morning at the factory not to work. The picket started last fall has been demobilized. And this time, exceptionally, it was not a defeat to produce "all home", but a first victory. Court.
Since March 2007, workers in foundries Sabiem, about sixty have received the salary in fits and starts, from September right nothing. The owner of the foundry - which until the 90s was part of the historic Sabiem Lifts, now owned by a Finnish multinational - Roberto Foch, has stopped paying everyone, not just the workers, but also the providers, social security, the supplementary pension fund for the Comet and the company that supplies electricity and gas, so that in September the plant was in the dark.
Fochi is covered by debt, 16 million €. Against this economic disruption Fiom, representing the workers, filed for bankruptcy at the court in Bologna for the payment of back wages. But not just for this. As discussed in the Focareta lawyer, that he has to account the story of the union, "in situations of crisis, bankruptcy is the only context in which workers are adequate safeguards." In fact, the law provides, as an automatic consequence of the declaration of bankruptcy, layoffs extraordinary. But the chances of survival of the foundry is related to bankruptcy, "where there was a relevant person to take over the farm, would have an incentive to do so in front of the receiver, not in front of a company undergoing disintegration." And damage to some rumors that there is a possible buyer.
"If there's a buyer's need to start again from here, this is a company that works. Of course we must do some 'restructuring but is a machine that goes, this - to talk about is John, laborer among the most active in mobilizing - From here there is already a number of clients, you have something to be amortized. Our task was to create the conditions for the buyer to be as smooth as possible and we move public opinion in the district have on our side for years called for the closure, but now it is an assembly where they say they are willing to tolerate for 3-4 years. And then with all the mess that we took people who buy here is not just an entrepreneur, he is a hero and then the allow you to stay here a little more '. " Here is the reason why the declaration of bankruptcy, after the hearing held on 28 January, has been hailed as a victory for workers. For now legal, in fact.
Told it seems the story of a "normal" corporate crisis. It's actually a much more complex story.
Produce pieces of cast iron for machine tools was no longer in the plans of the entrepreneur owner of Bologna Sabiem. The area that now houses the plant was sold in 2005 to the real estate group Ray, the fate of the foundry was tied to an agreement with the administrations of City and Province of Bologna and elsewhere in the district. The pact provided for the shift of production, from environmental impact, in exchange for availability of the administration building to make the land occupied by the smelter. The proceeds of this and other abandoned industrial area already in the province would have to Fochi provide the liquidity needed to build a new foundry in Calderara di Reno, in a less populated area, not far from Bologna. The jobs had to be secured and removed the toxic emissions from a district already compromised from the environmental point of view. But things did not go well.
The first alarm bell alerts you when Fochi pressures the Bologna City Council for approval di un piano di valorizzazione immobiliare dell’area della fonderia con indici di edificabilità molto alti e incompatibili, tra l’altro, con le caratteristiche urbanistiche della zona, a ridosso dell’Ospedale Maggiore e in prossimità di strade già molto trafficate.
Nel frattempo gli operai cominciano a notare una gestione dell’azienda quantomeno “distratta” e miope: “Ho l’impressione che la crisi di lavoro per la quale Fochi ha chiesto la cassa integrazione sia costruita – dice un altro operaio – Noi già a marzo 2007 facemmo tre settimane di sciopero per la scarsa qualità e sicurezza sul lavoro. Fochi faceva cose che non andavano bene. Aveva messo in azienda dirigenti che were concerned not to do good work, but to make it so. Then customers were stewed because the work was not done properly, at some point it was already known that a piece was bad even before the bottom, but executives there did so anyway to complete. "
The strategy of the entrepreneur begins to become clear: to maximize the ground and collects the benefits, making the company the crisis, put into liquidation and sell plants. Without any relocation, even without saving a job and retire another piece of the productive assets of the city.
Fochi The operation succeeds only in part. The land sale is a done deal, as recognized by the same employer, but the building index have not been raised: the City has remained steadfast in confrontation with the property. And then, after the bankruptcy order, it is said that the land is freed in time expected, given the possibility to restart the furnaces of the foundry.
Unfortunately, the history of seals and Sabiem can not be stored as the adventure of an isolated speculator. Staying in Santa Viola, historic working-class district of the capital Felsineo, just look around to see what many of the factories have become active here until a few years ago. Palaces and shopping malls. Industrial crisis, sale, real estate speculation are the stages of the process that is accompanying fixed il declino dell’industria bolognese. In questo mondo in dissolvenza gli operai sono degli ectoplasmi, ma con tanto di mutui e bollette inevase, e la questione ambientale, seria e concreta in quella parte della città, diventa un ricatto col quale i padroni riescono a strappare indici di edificabilità discutibili ma molto remunerativi. Così è andata dall’altra parte della strada, di fronte alla fonderia, dove fino a pochi anni fa c’erano le Officine Riva Calzoni e ora c’è il complesso residenziale Arcadia.
“Anche in quel caso c’era un accordo come quello della Sabiem – riferisce Bruno Papignani, segretario della Fiom bolognese – ma a un certo punto il titolare ha venduto a una finanziaria, the trousers has been broken into three small factories in the province, was built on part of the Esselunga. At the close of the workshops was followed by the construction of a residential complex, with a disproportionate elevation of the building index.
An architect who has conducted a workshop in the area of \u200b\u200bparticipatory planning tells us how it has gone from an urban regeneration project which included a two-storey houses and public parks to palaces with narrow beds now, "the story went like this: the City proposes a building index, the company tries it is an area attractive and he knows that at the end of may groped change. In fact, when it is clear that the political purpose of redevelopment is not obtained by those indices and you are likely to have empty apartments, not sold, why would they price too high, then the company loses because it certainly does not sell, but we also lose common because the area is not upgraded and remains empty. At that point the City has capacity to accommodate the demands of manufacturers and provide the justification for higher rates on the grounds that it was a technical problem. " All perfectly legal, though little transparency to citizens.
's blackmail areas that risk being abandoned, degraded and "insecure", blackmail dell'insostenibilità effects of some industrial products are effective levers to achieve significant real estate speculation. The realization of Arcadia, a residential neighborhood built with virtually no infrastructure costs or services (apart from a shopping center), with building index skyrocketed "during construction" (this is a case that then-Deputy Mayor John Salizzoni was one of the members who designed the intervention study real estate?) are above that looked Fochi: maximum gain for a few private sacrificing production, jobs and the welfare of the neighborhood. All with the support or tacit assent of public administrators.
This time it was different, working through a mobilization, the promotion of citizenship and an administration that has not sold on the blaze of building rights. Until the buyer actually appear. Until the next sale.
