I Stay At Home

In Italy, 8 million workers out of a total of 23 million had to keep working until today. (This might change in the next days.) Still it's good to look at how workers organized in base unions SICobas and ADL Cobas reacted when they were forced to go to work without minimal safety guarantees during the corona crisis:

Employer's association Confindustria prevented a shut down of production until today. From March 11th on, only small businesses and shops shut down their activities. Everything else went on producing as before, as if there were no case of emergency.

SI Cobas base union had called the state of agitation, to make it possible for every worker to go on strike, lawer Marina Prosperi explained. All over the country there was a strike wave in logistics and metal industry.

On March 18th, a campaign of drivers and logistics workers started. Under the slogan “We are not slaughter cattle. We also want to stay at home” they claimed that they and their loved ones and society in general had a right to life and health and that it had to be be respected.

“The employer's greed for profit can’t be stopped, even by the necessity to ensure public health. We demand that only the goods of public necessity shall circulate!” SICobas und ADLCobas stated on March 18.

In the warehouses organized by SICobas and ADL Cobas, 90% of the workers refused to go to work.