18 June 2021. At the Lidl warehouse in Biandrate near Novara, during the national strike for better working conditions in progress at the Lidl headquarters, supported by SiCobas, a comrade worker and coordinator of SiCobas Novara, Adil Belakhdim, an Italian of Moroccan origin, was run over by a truck in a reckless and criminal attempt by the driver to break the picket. The 37-year-old leaves behind a wife and two children, aged 4 and 6.
The bosses can hide behind the classic ploy of blaming the driver, but this episode marks a boundary, and crosses a new line in the struggles to come. The bar of repression is being raised higher and higher in favour of the bosses, even as they wash their hands of any complicity. This is the latest in a long line of physical attacks, either by thugs hired by the bosses, or by the bosses themselves, invariably under the banner of an anti-worker policy supported and condoned by the state.
This episode is a test of nerve for workers forced to take real action in an attempt to achieve a decent standard of living for themselves and their families. This deterioration in living and working conditions is overwhelming the entire working class, but has so far been met with very few responses, almost all of them coming from the logistics sector.
This victim of capitalist interests comes from a sector whose exploitation often exceeds any tolerable limit. In this sector, compulsory overtime, undeclared work and illegal hiring proliferate. Despite the banal rules of bourgeois legislation, it is a real no-man's land, where any improvements obtained (where they have been obtained) are soon reversed in the course of an intense conflict. It is a picture that reflects the future, which in truth is already here, of what is in store for the living and working conditions of the entire working class, without distinction of race or nation.
There is no escaping it. The "rights" that some want to protect are now empty and illusory facades. They are mere formalities which lead nowhere. Although wage claims are the indispensable starting point, the class struggle can no longer just be limited to them. We must make the qualitative leap towards openly political perspectives: the demands of a class that must grasp the reins of its own destiny, snatching them from the hands of the bourgeoisie, to become a class for itself. More than ever, it is necessary to build and develop the indispensable organ of the class struggle: the international and internationalist party of the communist revolution, to one day avenge the comrades who, like Adil, have fallen either directly or indirectly at the hands of the bosses.
GK
19 June 2021
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