Strike against the increase of daily working hours in Stellantis also in the Italian plants of FCA. An important internationalist initiative

On April 5, 2021, a new distribution of shifts and working hours will begin at the Stellantis plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan (USA). Under the new work organization, four teams will work four consecutive days (including Saturdays and Sundays) instead of three, with twelve hours per day per team instead of the previous eight.

Initially, Sterling workers had managed to fight back and stop this further exploitation, but Stellantis and the UAW union undermined the workers' struggle, claiming that the 2019 contract they had signed and entered into allowed them to do so.

In a world where machines are replacing the labor of women and men, it would make sense to organize to work less, reduce hours, pace and workload, and increase today's starvation wages, but instead the bosses are increasing hours to inhumane levels and continuing to make a profit, both on the skin of the workers and through technological advances in the plants.

According to Sterling, the bosses will put the same blackmail on the workers, will act according to momentary interests in all the factories of Stellantis around the world, and we can be sure that the new organization of labor will be put on us like a razor to the neck. As for the Italian factories, CEO Tavares has already stated that production costs in our country are much higher than elsewhere: against us the razor is already sharpened....

The usual servants, together with the owner, will argue that the only solution for the survival of the factories is a new organization of work, so that our health and our salary will deteriorate.

There is not a single FCA, PSA, or Stellantis plant or by whatever name they will sign in the future that was or will be built with the owners' money, not a single euro of profit has gone into their pockets thanks to their work, there is not a single government in the world that has not filled its coffers with tens of billions in non-repayable financing.

Despite the fact that they have always lived off our labor and endless public money, their hunger for power over people is no less than their hunger for money; so they are forcing this further, inhumane, worsening of working hours, but it is imperative that we side with our American colleagues and send a message of protest and worker solidarity to the bosses.

The bosses have the political tool that has always been under their control and the economic means to bribe the unions, as it has been shown in the United States between FCA and UAW, for which FCA has to pay a fine of 30 million dollars. We workers have the solidarity and the knowledge that without our work the bosses would not exist: the time has come to use all the tools of struggle in our possession.

Today we are called to fight against a labor model that is thousands of miles away, but can be near us in a few months, a model that must be defeated with the solidarity and strength of the workers.

Against the extension of working hours at the Sterling Heights plant, on April 1, 2021, Stellantis plants in Melfi, Pomigliano, Mirafiori, Cassino, Sevel Val di Sangro and Termoli will call for a two-hour strike in all shifts, with meetings to discuss new initiatives to be implemented.

We would have liked our initiative to coincide with the start of the new labor organization in Sterling Heights, but since it falls during the Easter vacations, we had to postpone the strike to the date indicated above.

ITALIAN STELLANTIS WORKERS - AGAINST THE ENSLAVEMENT OF WORKING HOURS