WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, FDCA, Il Cantiere n. 17 - Safety at work, an opportunity to fight in medium-sized enterprises - FAI - sez. "M. Bakunin" by Jesi (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The union, and more generally the class struggle, hasn't been in fashion for

years. Across the age groups, even if for different reasons, workers do not
consider the union an instrument capable of generating improvements in their
social condition. However, the fact must necessarily be considered as a
consequence of the cultural impoverishment of the exploited, in fact the curious
datum is that the immediate and tangible conquests which the union struggle can
bring are today entrusted to politics: the Italians, even if less and less (with
figures at low), they no longer vote for belonging and affiliation to one party
rather than another, but by choice of the crest-of-the-wave politician who most
seems to represent and express the urgent and compelling needs of the moment,
while more than two centuries of struggle of class should have established the
opposite in collective memory: the union is needed for today's bread, politics
for building the society of tomorrow. The degree of confusion, loss of
orientation, memory and an ability to read one's condition seem to be important
elements for understanding today's poverty, which are reflected in the
relationship one has towards one's workmates, towards the company, to their
family members in their spare time.
The great strikes of the metalworkers, the demonstrations of force in the
factories and in the squares perhaps tomorrow will be replaced effectively with
other modalities based on new sectors that have become central to the class
conflict, but so far it is the industrial world that seems to have produced,
despite itself, organizational methods, forms of struggle that can hardly be
equaled or surpassed: in other words, the industrial scale (regardless of the
sector) seems to be the key to starting the social ferment, which needs, in a
world that remains capitalist, contractual strength, regardless of the
'contingent objective for which it is called into question on the basis of the
cultural and social status of the workers, starting from wage increases, up to
the "civil" battles that only apparently come out of the specific context of the
world of work: a different approach towards the environment , social and gender
inequalities.
To date, this contractual force is reduced to a flicker: the pickets are
ordinarily charged by the police, pensions are gradually replaced by
supplementary funds, temporary contracts are the order of the day and now also
exist in an indeterminate form (staff leasing is called ).
All this in a country where wages remain among the lowest in Europe, factories
close, and family welfare still seems to remain the last social network before
the individual abyss, typical of the North American context.
Even in the sectors where union organization remains anchored, it only partially
manages to shore up the rights conquered far too long ago in the automotive
industry or reconquered in the combative logistics warehouses, always through the
traditional bargaining channels, since the high organization of large SPA groups,
on the one hand has made the workplace generally safer than in the past, but on
the other has achieved in this way a shortening of production and processing
times, increasingly exploiting the workforce, adapting to a market that has
rediscovered the flexibility to obtain further profit. In this field, times,
wages, and economic security (i.e. a permanent job, and not to lose it due to
relocations always around the corner) constitute the core of the demands that the
residual union must support and defend in order not to take a step backwards.
A step back instead, compared to the big international profit machines, are the
medium-small companies, SRL or even SNC. Those that still have a real master, who
comes to work with a spaceship car, not deviating too much from those of his
workers, but bought strictly in instalments. The laws of the large international
market give vent to the need for low production costs in precisely this type of
company, which makes up for the hidden shortcomings of the large ones:
flexibility, or the pull market, which instead of pushing towards customers asks
them what to produce and when, it requires lean (intelligent, agile) management
of flows so as not to generate inventories, and therefore to produce and transfer
the requested goods instantly[JIT Just In Time]. All this, while keeping the
quality of the product high, is obtained through the implementation of a
corollary of beautiful[so to speak]philosophical concepts concerning cleanliness,
order, organization of one's workstation, simplification of operations carried
out by operators, and warehouse management to cut costs. In reality, the bulk of
the cuts are made simply by offloading all possible production to subcontractors,
in this way the large agile factory maintains the departments used for checking
quality and more complex processes in its own factory, taking care to always have
a good facade image from present to investors, and unloading the dirty work on
the less structured factories.
The small ones cover the holes of the large ones, but how do they manage to have
a lower production cost if the processes are the same? In other words, under what
guise is exploitation hidden in these small companies which, due to their income
and the number of employees, might also seem "harmless", morally sustainable and
respectful of the territory in which they operate compared to the transnational
mega-monsters? national?
The low cost is obtained thanks to ancient contractual formulas, such as
piecework, which still exists legally, both in pure and hybrid form, but also
through the poor organization of the company structure, directly weighing on the
workers: in other words, it is the worker himself who, also due to his own
ignorance or extreme honesty and "goodness" (think for example of the worker who
considers the higher earnings of the factory as directly connected to an
improvement in his condition) provides the backbone by filling the gaps of a
rough management times and company methods.
Furthermore, the poor ability to manage flows, with the consequent waste of time
and resources, is attributed to the worker himself, allowing the company and
middle managers to maintain their position of dominance, in a relational dynamic
often close to medieval feudalism . The gain is not calculated in the long term,
but in the short term: occupational safety is therefore considered a cost, an
unnecessary superstructure, workers are not aware of the real risks they run
during their work shift and on the other hand the organized union, which, as
already mentioned, struggles in the larger contexts, often fails to be present,
both for lack of members and for a structural weakness linked to the preparation
of the militants, but even more to the union line itself. As militants of the
class struggle, it therefore seems strategically important to consider safety at
work as an intermediate objective for the political growth of workers, but acting
in environments such as those described above requires not only time and
patience, to take root rigorously within the workplace, but also tactical acumen.
Very often in such contexts familial social relationships weigh, in dynamics
similar to those of a village: everyone knows everything about everyone. In
short, "we are all one big family", but the feelings that then prevail are those
of resentment and hatred between colleagues, and the cohesion of the workers is
so often undermined by dynamics of extreme servility. On the contrary, it may
happen that the small factory is structured in such a way as to absorb the impact
of a high volume of "seasonal" or aperiodic work, which makes it a seaport full
of fixed-term temporary workers, making it difficult to build a united front, so
that the union is often present but only as a spokesperson for the older
permanent worker.
In other words, you need to know how to claim intelligently by identifying more
or less tangible critical issues depending on the degree of understanding of the
colleagues with whom you spend your daily work:
     PPE as concrete, tangible objects, but which, in order to be functional,
require the worker's ability to know how to recognize their long-term benefit
(which translates into knowing how to understand the probabilistic calculation of
contracting an injury by not wearing them);
     - reorganization of work by decreasing the load of psychophysical stress as
a key but less tangible element, with immediate benefits, also raising work
skills, perhaps more easily understandable because it identifies problems
upwards, or towards wrong choices or management deficiencies .
It requires less effort on the part of the worker to understand the benefits.

It is therefore up to us to know how to exploit these opportunities to widen a
breach in widespread ignorance, trying to bring added value to the knowledge
required of the employee to work in a company that does not ask to observe work
procedures and safety standards to the letter, on the contrary sometimes he
directly asks not to observe them at all.
Yet these rules and procedures, often, if respected, are to our advantage, in
other words the quality of our work must be high regardless of the requests that
the company places, because paradoxically in this way we are better protected.
Each task, each process, requires a certain amount of time, there are no
shortcuts, or rather the shortcuts are all at our expense because they expose us
to high risks, moreover becoming directly responsible for any accidents and
misfortunes, according to decree 81, or T.U. for safety at work.
But how to become aware of work procedures if the execution of the work is handed
down by older workers often after years of non-standard execution and in an
informal way?
If the factory is certified (e.g. ISO9001), even if it does not actually apply
the procedures it has given itself, it must have written them in black and white
somewhere together with the DVR Risk Assessment Document.
Papers that can be used to the advantage of the correct execution of the
processes, or consulted subsequently to identify the incorrect identification and
assessment of the risk.
In fact, it may happen that the DVR has been drawn up hastily, or that reference
values have been entered, or oversized safety measures compared to those actually
applied. Or that the procedures outlined in the documentation produced for
ISO9001 certification are so cumbersome as to require the operator, more or less
directly, not to apply them.
Another important thing: the changes in the working environment go hand in hand
with the updating of the DVR, while usually small companies after a first draft
of the DVR do nothing more, just as the change in general can not be managed at
all, because underestimated by the Management, even the maps describing the
routes and emergency exits may not be updated, like the organization chart or the
documentation relating to the designation of internal roles for first aid and
fire prevention.
Companies, from this point of view, could therefore potentially remain exposed to
well-aimed claiming attacks if necessary to obtain better working conditions.
Obtaining the documentation in question sometimes requires ingenuity, but in
general it is a simpler operation if you manage to obtain the role of Workers'
Safety Representative, in the event that this position is reached you must
operate with extreme caution to ensure that a widespread culture of safety should
be created around it, so that the RLS can become a link between workers and the
union struggle, without making it an outlet or worse, a role at the service of
workers, who easily do not have the time and desire to to take an interest in the
subject by delegating tout court precisely to the RLS tasks relating to the
relationship with the employers, thus sterilizing any possible political growth.
In the current phase, the balance of power is so unbalanced towards the bosses
that every small tool that can create and strengthen relationships and claims,
knowledge and solidarity must be taken into consideration along a path in which
proletarian participation and combativeness must be rebuilt before yet to recover.

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/blog/2023/05/03/il-cantiere-di-febbraio-2023-2/
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