WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanitanova #2-25: Mined track. RFI shifts responsibility to railway workers (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 It took just over six months since the new organizational model of the

railway maintenance sector came into force, based on an agreement
between RFI- Rete Ferroviaria Italiana and the confederal unions, for
many of the problems and critical issues reported by workers to surface
in all their drama. It is enough to reread the articles that this
newspaper has dedicated to the topic to realize how what is happening
was easily predictable and how the criticisms and complaints made by
workers have been ignored. If they had been listened to and not
scientifically and prejudicially ignored, they could have avoided or at
least mitigated some problems.

It is useless to reiterate here the repercussions that the new
organization has had on the private lives of railway workers, completely
cancelled out due to shifts continually moved with minimal notice; on
their health, "thanks" to schedules that do not allow adequate rest and
to an organization that is, to say the least, improvised; on the safety
of maintenance workers, suffice it to say that accidents at work have
increased by twenty percent. These are facts that are clearly negligible
for those who signed this agreement which, for the sake of truth,
included among its objectives, it is worth remembering, the:
"reconciliation of life and work times" and "an organization (...) in
compliance with safety at work", aspects that were completely
disregarded without, however, always to refer to the agreement in
question, in exchange for the slightest glimpse of the declared
increases in the levels of preventive maintenance or the internalization
of activities currently outsourced.

In recent weeks we have witnessed a whole series of breakdowns,
anomalies and accidents that have created enormous inconvenience to rail
traffic with heavy delays, cancellations of trains and considerable
inconvenience for all passengers who have found themselves unable to use
an essential service such as mobility. The maintenance workers, who have
always been well aware of the consequences that this new model would
have also brought about in terms of efficiency of the service provided,
have continuously reiterated the impossibility of carrying out adequate
maintenance due to the working conditions that this new organization
establishes, denouncing the consequences in terms of breakdowns that all
this would have brought about, it is enough to quote what was written in
this newspaper last October (UN 30/24): "Paradoxically then (...) this
organization (...) is absolutely not functional even from a corporate
point of view, cyclical maintenance, which in fact prevents accidents
and breakdowns, is practically zero (...) the inconveniences to
circulation and the significant delays of this last period risk being
only a first warning of what could happen soon".

How did RFI, and in general the FS group, react to this situation?
Perhaps admitting the inadequacy of the new organization or at least its
too hasty implementation and trying to recalibrate the maintenance
model, attempting to restore a more liveable situation for workers and
at the same time trying to safeguard and restore the minimum levels of
safety and efficiency of circulation? Obviously not. Instead, he opted
for a new and at the same time old strategy, artfully creating a
conspiracy theory to mask his own failures and his own culpable
shortcomings. Here then is the sabotage hypothesis: shady individuals
who wander along the railway lines with screwdrivers, bicycle chains,
hammers, nails and bottles and who undermine the safety of the railway
infrastructure causing, or risking causing, damage, anomalies,
breakdowns, accidents and consequent delays; shady individuals who, it
is implied but sometimes even openly declared, would be the railway
workers themselves. The laughability of the accusation is quite evident
and a few considerations would be enough to demonstrate its absurdity;
we mention two of the many that we could state. First, if the FS group
believed that there was a well-founded or even remotely probable risk of
sabotage to the infrastructure, it should not allow trains to circulate
with the risk of accidents and damage to passengers; second, if it
considered the possibility that the maintenance workers themselves were
undermining the safety of the railway lines to be real, why would it
have arranged shifts to be present in locations considered strategic by
the potential damagers themselves?   Beyond the comic nature of the
accusation, and in general of the whole hypothesis, what is truly
serious and disconcerting is the fact that this theorem has gone from
being one of the many extemporaneous and improvised declarations on the
subject, - just think of the proposal to reduce the number of trains to
be run as a solution to reduce accidents or the "explanation" that sees
the longitudinal limitations of the Italian territory among the causes
of the continuous inconveniences - to a real hypothesis, complete with a
complaint from the company's top management to the Digos and subsequent
investigations to ascertain the plausibility of the complaint: an act
that implies a whole series of disturbing consequences. With this move,
the company protects itself against all possible accidents, delays or
breakdowns that from now on will no longer be considered as a direct
consequence of the ineffectiveness of the new organizational model, but
exclusively of the "sabotage" to which the infrastructure will be
subjected. All the responsibility will be placed on a scapegoat, thus
masking the structural shortcomings and the impossibility of providing
an adequate, efficient and safe service and at the same time relieving
the promoters of this recent project of any blame or criticism.
Furthermore, any dissenting internal voice will be silenced: any
objection addressed to the company will be considered as an "apology for
crime", a tacit consent to actions aimed at damaging circulation, in an
increasingly authoritarian climate where censorship will become the
norm. It is a climate that the company had already put in place,
punishing with disciplinary sanctions, fines and suspensions those who
had not shown themselves to be in line, but which from now on will be
even more stringent and exasperated; and we can already hear the
distant, but not too distant, echo of the measures with which FS, in
1923, purged a whole series of unwanted employees, anarchists,
maximalists and communists.

Another aspect to consider is the one related to the "peace of mind" of
the maintenance workers in carrying out their activities: like all those
who work, in fact, they are not infallible and are subject to errors,
which from now on will however be studied with a magnifying glass to
understand if there could have been malice. In short, there will no
longer be "simple" errors, but only hypotheses of crime; each operator
will have to live with the sword of Damocles hanging over their head, in
a toxic and highly stressful climate that will undermine their
efficiency and lead them to be increasingly subject to making mistakes
in a never-ending vicious circle.

Finally, an "enemy" responsible for the poor service, delays and
cancellations is thrown to the vast audience of travellers and those who
use the services of the FS group, an enemy who has no qualms about
putting everyone in danger to achieve his goals and who does not care
about the inconveniences to which users are subjected; a feeling of
rancor and outright resentment is artfully created in public opinion
towards those who fight, at the same time, both for their rights and to
guarantee a safe and efficient service. An attempt is made to create an
"enemy" in an attempt to divert attention from those truly responsible
for the situation, who can thus continue, calmly and without being
disturbed, to implement their plans, appearing moreover as the only ones
truly concerned with guaranteeing users and protecting them from those
who want to deny them the right to mobility.

A necessary reflection must then be made on the behavior of the mass
media regarding the subject and on how they have generally addressed the
issue: the media, in the majority of cases, have never, at any time,
questioned the hypothesis of sabotage, making it more and more credible
with unlikely footage fished out who knows where, highlighting foreign
objects along the railway lines, without ever examining the news in
depth, consulting the workers, without carrying out any kind of
journalistic investigation, but only and exclusively providing a
distorted and convenient, often scandalous and scandalized image of what
happened. For example, they have omitted to say, just to mention a
single fact, how the railway lines are not closed and that anyone can
easily access them and throw waste of any kind; or how very often it is
atmospheric agents that transport material onto the tracks and the
overhead line, something that has always happened, and that only the
constant presence and readiness of those who work there has often
prevented mix-ups and anomalies. Newspapers and TV have tried to ride
the news, without addressing or delving into the issues in question or
developing a critical reasoning, exploiting the event without providing
clarity, without listening to the opinions and testimonies of those
directly involved, producing reports and articles that oscillate between
the worst level of gossip and a tutorial on how to damage railway
companies. Even in this case, as is now a consolidated habit, they ride
the moment, they sell the news as a commodity, they try, in the classic
"divide and conquer" style, to fragment the working class into
watertight sectors and compartments to create divisions and conflicts,
jealousies and misunderstandings, prevent a common action that alone
could call into question the power and hegemony of a ruling class that
pursues its objectives on the skin, and on the corpses, of those who work.

A final consideration must be made on the behavior of the unions in the
specific case discussed. In the face of statements from corporate and
government leaders about the possibility of sabotage by workers, serious
statements, damaging to the reputation of an entire category and, as we
have tried to underline, dangerous and insidious, the response of the
trade unions, especially the confederal ones, has been completely
insufficient. While on the one hand the grassroots unions have rushed to
denounce the incident with press releases and so on, siding with the
maintenance workers and reiterating the responsibilities of the January
10 agreement, on the other hand the response of the confederal acronyms,
which also in terms of media resonance would have had a completely
different value, has been rather timid, albeit with some exceptions. The
reason seems simple enough: despite pressure from members to back out of
the agreement, the national unions have no intention, at least for now,
of going back, implicitly admitting the failure of the new
organizational model and consequently declaring its end, or in any case
acknowledging the current impossibility of implementing it, and
postponing its possible execution until the minimum conditions necessary
for its sustainability are present.

We know well how, in a completely different context and moment, unproven
theorems, unfounded hypotheses and attempts at misdirection led the
railway worker, train conductor, Giuseppe Pinelli to "commit suicide".
The lessons of history are unfortunately too often ignored and forgotten.

If we wanted to play at being conspiracy theorists for a moment, we
could venture an absurd hypothesis: could all these breakdowns and
accidents caused by the new organization serve to demonstrate the
inefficiency and unprofitability of the maintenance system and not be
aimed at a possible privatization?

German

https://umanitanova.org/binario-minato-rfi-scarica-le-responsabilita-sui-ferrovieri/
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