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ABSTRACT
This article retraces the history of a FIAT factory located in a greenfield site in the South of Italy through representations of industrial work that have evolved over time. Relying on ethnographic research that I conducted in the towns of Melfi and Potenza, I describe how different forms of understanding the work done there oppose, affect and modify each other. The factory’s history from the early 1990s to recent years is divided into three main phases. The first section shows that external and self-produced representations of work were widely opposed in the first decade following the opening of the factory. The second section focuses on a strike that broke out in 2004, and its consequences in terms of collective memory. Finally, the third section demonstrates how some images shared by workers and local community have evolved from negative to positive, in a context of economic crisis. For each of the phases of the history of the factory, this article highlights local, national and global factors that determine the frames of reference within which perceptions of work are built.
Acknowledgments
I thank Nicola Pizzolato for his useful advice and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The acronym SATA stands for Automobile Society for Advanced Technologies. Despite it being entirely controlled by FIAT, the new society was free from the collective bargaining agreement applied in other Italian FIAT factories.
2. Demology is the study of popular culture. It equates with the folklore studies in the Anglo-Saxon countries. In the 50s and 60s the demo-ethnological studies in Italy focussed mainly on cultural differences within the national territory, what Mario Alberto Cirese defined a variety of ‘cultural levels’, rather than on extra-European cultures. This framework has provided an influential methodology in ethnographic studies on the relationship between social strata and classes.
3. The workers’ perceptions vary in relation to multiple factors such as their work tasks and their position in the factory.
4. The 1980 Irpinia earthquake struck Southern Italy on November 23. It was one of the most destructive natural catastrophes in Italy in the last century. Its epicentre was the hinterland of the Campania region, bordering Basilicata. Damage was spread over more than 26,000 km², including Melfi.
5. The construction of the FIAT plant in the town of Melfi entailed an investment of 4,671 billion lire of which 1,370 was state funded. It was the most important industrial policy project undertaken in the Basilicata region in terms of public investment.
6. Cesare Romiti’s entire speech was reported by the magazine L’Espresso under the title: ‘Reinventare la FIAT’ (Reinventing FIAT), 1994, 51–52, pp.171–183.
7. It is interesting to note that through the implementation of ‘lean production’ which is based on the just-in-time system, FIAT constructed in San Nicola di Melfi – the same area where the mother factory is located – all the main satellite industries to supply car components to the parent company in real time. The few metalworking companies already present in Basilicata before FIAT’s arrival have sometimes contributed some small production quotas for the tier one suppliers of FIAT. The FIAT group in Melfi offered tier two companies only a marginal involvement in the manufacturing chain leading to their eventual disappearance. On the relationship between FIAT and regional industries see Bubbico (Citation2002), L’indotto auto della FIAT-SATA di Melfi, 83–88.
8. Interview with Enrico, FIAT worker, paint shop, Melfi, August 2011.
9. Source: Istat, censuses on regional and national employment for the years 1991 and 1992.
10. Beyond the opportunity of gaining access to state funding through the post-earthquake laws mentioned above, FIAT found it convenient to locate a new plant in Melfi because of a weak industrial and trade union tradition in this greenfield area. This social feature of the territory would have offered FIAT a less conflictual and more collaborative workforce than redfields or brownfields.
11. See for example: Piselli (Citation1976), La donna che lavora.
12. Commuting is widely practiced by workers in Melfi since the FIAT company recruited its workers in a wide area ranging from the towns located in the bordering regions of Puglia and Campania to the hinterland of the Basilicata region where some worker municipalities are about 100 kilometres from the industrial area of San Nicola.
13. According to data gathered by the CGIL trade union, a total of 9,000 disciplinary measures were inflicted on workers in 10 years (from 1993 to 2003).
14. Interview with Domenico, Montemurro, June 2006.
15. The question of the narrative identity is taken up by David Wood in On Paul Ricoeur. Narrative and interpretation. Building on Ricoeur’s two essays included in this book, Wood claims that self-knowledge is indeed self-interpretation since people refigurate their ordinary temporal experiences through the narrative mediation, and that ‘we never cease to reinterpret the narrative identity that constitutes us, in the light of the narratives proposed to us by our culture’ (Wood, Citation1991, p. 32).
16. In 2003 the FIAT workers of Termini Imerese, located in the Sicilia region, protested against the factory’s closure. Some militant workers from Melfi participated in that protest in solidarity with their colleagues, exporting their methods of struggle the following year.
17. On the reasons and the symbols mobilised throughout the protest of Scanzano see: Zinn (Citation2007), I quindici giorni di Scanzano.
18. The first to go on strike were the workers of Arvil (logistics) and Magneti Marelli (suspension systems). In the fall of 2003, the Arvil company announced the dismissal of 50 employees mainly with occupational illnesses, simultaneously employing temporary workers.
19. Since the supply firms, which are the first level of the production chain based on a just-in-time system, stopped supplying the assembly line, FIAT declared a ‘jobless’ state for all its employees. This situation was particularly unsustainable for the many commuters who, after two working hours, were forced to leave the factory.
20. For a detailed chronology of the strike see Ferrero and Lombardi (Citation2004), La primavera di Melfi; Rsu-Fiom, Lotte operaie alla FIAT di Melfi(Citation2004).
21. The split between the factory and external community can be attributed to various factors. On this point, it is necessary to recall that the industrial site of San Nicola is a geographically separated space from the city of Melfi, not visible from the town. Moreover, the factory, which is based on a continuous-process production is regulated by rhythms and times which differ from those on which the external social life is structured.
22. The FIOM-CGIL Trade union is well known for a political ideology that is the precise opposite of FIAT’s. It was the first trade union to support the workers’ protest and to get involved in organising the 21-day strike.
23. Lucania is the historic name of the Basilicata region.
24. Interview with Emanuele, FIOM-CGIL shop steward, Potenza, May 2011.
25. Since this article relies upon data gathered at two different moments of the history of the FIAT factory in Melfi, these conclusions result from a comparison between the interviews done in 2006, and the narratives collected at least 5 years later.
26. The notion of ‘modern slaves’ is part of a critical discourse against the working organization in FIAT before the 2004 strike, but it is also used to denounce current working conditions which have deteriorated through a restructuring of the factory. More details concerning the restructuring that occurred in 2010 are provided in the last section of this paper.
27. Sergio Marchionne was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of FIAT until July 2018.
28. Interview with Michele, assembly line worker, Potenza, January 2012.
29. See for instance Beyond the Ruins: The Cultural Meaning of Deindustrialization, edited by Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott (Citation2003), where tales of victimization and the swell of industrial nostalgia are the effects and long-term consequences of mill and factory closures.
30. As explained in the last section of this paper, terms like ‘slaves’ and ‘negros’ can be related to economic and social divisions between North and South, which have characterized Italy’s history since its unification (1861). A stereotyped language spread in the post-unification period, when the criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso worked out the racial theory of the ethnic inferiority of southern people. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, positivist scholars like Alfredo Niceforo and Giuseppe Sergi confirmed Lombroso’s theory, giving it a scientific character. An overview of the origins of prejudice against the South of Italy is provided by John Dickie (Citation1999), Darkest Italy: The Nation and the Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno.
31. The notion ‘frame of reference’ refers to ‘the cognitive and normative frame used by people to make sense of their world and act on it’, see de L’Estoile, ‘Money Is Good, but a Friend Is Better’, S64.
32. In December 2014 the Fiat plant in Melfi started producing two new models of cars (the Jeep Renegade and the 500X), bringing an end to the temporary unemployment compensation system.
33. According to the answers to a survey questionnaire that I distributed to a sample of 284 workers, 228 FIAT workers had a partner and 203 of them had children. Among them, 195 families relied on just one income, the FIAT salary.
34. I refer here to the concepts of ‘field of opportunities’ and ‘frame of reference’ advanced by Benoît de L’Estoile in ‘Money Is Good, but a Friend Is Better’.
35. Interview with Maurizio, assembly line worker, Potenza, January 2013.
36. Giuseppe, worker at Magneti Marelli, a satellite industry of FIAT, Melfi, December 2012.
37. Finally, the concept of ‘modern slaves’, which combines the idea of modernity of the factory with the idea of slavery represented by the working and living conditions of the landless peasants during Latifundism, flows into the definition of ‘robotic workers’. In other words, from the workers’ standpoint, having a robotic mentality equates to being a slave in a modern context exactly like in the Melfi automated factory. The adjective ‘niggers’ present in the quote above is used in its derogatory sense to reinforce the idea of the slavery conditions to which workers have been subjected in the factory. It does not refer to a specific past or events, but it certainly reflects the pejorative image evoked by the word itself in common parlance.
38. Interview with Carmine, assembly line worker, Potenza, January 2012.
39. Such episodes ranged from the denial of the right to housing for southern immigrants to workplace injustices. Some discriminatory stories against southern workers who emigrated to Turin and Milan after the Second World War have been collected in Milano, Corea(Citation1960). Inchiesta sugli immigrati negli anni del «miracolo», and L’immigrazione meridionale a Torino(Citation1964).
40. Interview with Enrico, worker at MAC S.p.A., satellite industry of FIAT, Potenza, August2012.
41.. Working 18 shifts a week implies that they work 6 days per week and 8 hours per day. If we multiply the 3 eight-hour shifts per day (3x8 = 24 hours) for the 6 working days per week, we get 18 weekly work shifts.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Elena Dinubila
Elena Dinubila is research assistant at the LAMES-CNRS, Aix-Marseille University. She holds a PhD in ‘Cultural Anthropology’ from the University of Siena and was postdoctoral fellow at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH). Her fields of interest include: labour transformations and workers’ daily life in contemporary societies; representations, conflict and working practices in post-Fordism. Her current main research project involves an analysis of social dynamics and industrial risks related to the petrochemical sector in Étang-de-Berre (South of France).