BY MARTÍN KOPPEL AND DAVID CORONA
CO'RDOBA, Argentina - "There is a war at Fiat." This was the comment of several fired auto workers in a June 7 interview at the union hall here. The workers at the giant auto plant were victimized for their union activities and are fighting to be reinstated.

The unionists were quick to add, however, that this is a two-sided war. "Fiat was degrading our dignity and jeopardizing our jobs. We said `Enough,' " said Víctor Pineda, one of the fired workers. "If they succeed in imposing these conditions here, the bosses will do the same in other auto plants and other industries."

Since September, the Fiat plant in this industrial city has been the scene of one of the most important labor battles in Argentina in a number of years. The auto workers are fighting for recognition of their union and resisting the company's attempt to take major concessions in wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Co'rdoba is the center of the auto and aerospace industry of this South American country. Besides the Italian- based Fiat, General Motors, Chrysler, Volkswagen, and Renault all have auto assembly or parts plants in the metropolitan area, and they are rapidly expanding their manufacturing capacity. Chrysler, for example, opened a new plant here in late April that makes Jeep Grand Cherokees. U.S., European, and Japanese automakers are pouring a hefty $18 billion into new factories in South America, primarily in Brazil and Argentina. They are driven by increased world competition, the attraction of lower wages and regional trade barriers, and the hope of expanding their market share in the region.

Auto boom in Argentina and Brazil
Auto executives point to a new rise in economic output in Brazil and Argentina -more than 7 percent growth is projected in Argentina this year - and a relatively large middle class in these industrially advanced semicolonial countries. Auto sales in Brazil in the first quarter of 1997 ran at an annual rate of 2.2 million vehicles, triple the level five years ago. Sales in Argentina are at an annual pace of 400,000 vehicles. Profit-giddy auto manufacturers have brushed aside warnings of an auto glut or of another crisis like the 1994 Mexican peso collapse, which rocked the region's economies.

Auto giants like GM and Fiat are cashing in on the antilabor policies of the capitalist governments in Argentina and elsewhere in South America. The government of Argentine president Carlos Menem is pushing to pass a sweeping "labor flexibilization" bill. The measure would make it easier for employers to fire workers, extend probationary periods, hire temporary workers, change work schedules more freely, peg wages to productivity, and gut collective bargaining by allowing plant-wide or even so- called individual contracts with workers instead of agreements for all workers in an industry or company as a whole.

"Fiat is already trying to implement the labor flexibilization here," noted Eduardo Mulhall, one of the fired workers. He explained that last year the old Fiat plant in Co'rdoba, which has changed owners and names several times, was bought back by the Italian company from the local capitalist Macri family. Fiat immediately took a hard-nosed stance.

Management refused to bargain in good faith with the metalworkers union, UOM, and signed a sweetheart contract with SMATA, the machinists union, which has contracts with other major auto companies. "They signed the contract behind the backs of the workers," said Carlos Gallo, another fired worker and the main leader of the union activists in the plant.

"When it took over, Fiat terminated all workers, with severance pay, and rehired them as new employees with no seniority rights. They imposed a 50 percent pay cut, from about 400 pesos every two weeks to 400 pesos a month," said Marcelo Zárate. "Rents in Co'rdoba, for example, are 300- 400 pesos a month. Prices for many consumer goods in Argentina are comparable to those in the United States.

"In the name of `competitiveness,' the company imposed much worse conditions in the plant," Gallo added. "The workday was reduced from 8 to 7 hours, but you have to work Saturdays. If there is lost production from a blackout, say, employees are forced to work weekends. Vacation pay was cut from 135 hours to 85 hours. The lunch was moved to the end of the workday, with only a 12-minute break per shift. And the line speed was brutally jacked up."

Meanwhile, Fiat has built a $600 million auto assembly plant adjoining the old factory, which makes engines and gearboxes. The modern plant, which operates on a "just-in- time" basis, produces a new "world class" car every two minutes and is projected to increase output to 200,000 units a year for sale in the Mercosur countries, which include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

"The company is using `work teams,' `quality circles,' and competitiveness awards. It pays bonuses based on plant- wide absenteeism to try to get workers to control each other," Mulhall explained. "Management holds big events where workers and their families are invited, to try to control our lives and free time. These work norms and methods may already be common in the United States, but they are new for us in Argentina and we're trying to find ways to fight them."

First factory occupation
Gallo recounted workers' response to Fiat's offensive. "On the first day the plant came under new ownership, Sept. 19, 1996, we occupied the factory. Workers protested the contract and the fact that we had no say in the matter. There was big participation among the 1,700 workers in the takeover, which lasted five days.

"The plant occupation was important -it was one of the first signs that something is changing in Argentina. You have to remember that we are still recovering from a period where the best working-class leaders were killed and disappeared. That was a major defeat," Gallo emphasized.

The unionist was referring to the U.S.-backed military regime that ruled Argentina in 1976-83. The dictatorship was the capitalist class's brutal response to the prerevolutionary upsurge that had begun in the late 1960s. A high point of that upsurge was the 1969 Cordobazo, an uprising in Co'rdoba led by the industrial working class in which the Fiat workers played a central role. Vanguard workers there were murdered, jailed, or driven into exile by the military regime.

The return of civilian bourgeois rule was accompanied by devastating hyperinflation, followed by record unemployment - now officially at 17 percent - which instilled fear of economic instability. But the new generation of workers entering the plants is not marked by these past blows and defeats, and their readiness to fight is inspiring some of the veteran workers.

"What's changing is a new willingness to fight," Zárate said. "Today we also see the popular rebellions in Cutral-Có, Jujuy, and Salta," which have been led by unemployed workers and youth.

After the occupation of the Fiat plant, an agreement was reached through compulsory arbitration. "We won some important concessions," Gallo said. The company agreed to restore the previous workweek and bring pay back up to 95 percent of the previous rates for two years by adding a monthly bonus that is not folded into the basic wage.

Workers also elected a new local leadership of nine, with Gallo as the union secretary. They then undertook a series of moves to organize a union that would answer to their needs. After SMATA refused to let them organize their own local and elect their leadership, the FIAT workers voted overwhelmingly to establish an independent union, SITRAMF (Union of Machinists in Ferreyra), which was open to all industrial workers in Ferreyra, the area on the outskirts of Co'rdoba where Fiat and many auto parts and other factories are located.

Victimization of unionists
The company and the government refused to recognize the independent union. "We were not going to give in, so Fiat began to victimize workers," said Roberto Ramos, a 28-year- old worker and one of the elected leaders. "In response, a second factory occupation took place January 22. The company then fired 42 workers, including the elected representatives." Other union militants have been eliminated through forced "resignations."

The Fiat workers continued to organize marches and rallies outside the plant gate to press their demands, including reinstatement of the victimized workers. They were joined in several mobilizations by workers from the CIADEA (Renault) factory and nearby parts plants.

To get around the government's refusal to grant legal recognition to their union, workers then decided to join the UOM.

"We carried out a number of mass actions - a 24-hour strike, a march of 1,000 workers, then another one-day strike," Gallo reported.

Gallo himself was fired May 23. Six days later, the Fiat workers blocked Highway 9, which runs in front of the plant, to protest Gallo's firing and commemorate the anniversary of the Cordobazo.

Meanwhile, the unionists are awaiting official recognition from the General Workers Confederation (CGT), the country's main trade union federation, to which the UOM is affiliated.

Massive hiring of young workers
"The company is trying to create an atmosphere of terror in the plant," Juan Cortiz remarked. "New workers who attend union meetings or openly associate with union members are fired. Even so, there is sympathy for the union among many of the young workers."

As part of its plant expansion, Fiat hired 1,800 workers, overwhelmingly in their late teens and twenties, on top of the 1,700 workers from the old plant. They continue to hire at a rate of 150 a week, aiming for a workforce of 5,000.

Zárate added, "Fiat's goal was to hire young workers with technical skills, hoping they would be favorable to the company and easier to exploit. When the young workers didn't play their game, the company then began hiring workers in their 40s. Because of the victimizations, we have to function underground. To reach the young workers, we visit them at their homes."

In face of the brutal speed-up, even some of the recently hired workers have carried out job actions in the new facility.

The struggle at Fiat reflects moods developing among other industrial workers. Workers at the CIADEA plant have also been fighting an attempt to gut their union. On November 12, some 3,500 auto workers there occupied the plant in support of the 500 maintenance workers, who faced being rehired as new employees of the French-based Polymont company.

"Our fight is part of the struggle against the government's labor flexibilization bill," Gallo said. "The bosses have already begun to implement it at Renault and Volkswagen, and it will be used against the whole labor movement."

Mulhall added, "The Menem government already sold the [state-owned] oil company, railroads, airlines, and telephone company to foreign capitalists, who have laid off tens of thousands of workers. This is one of the results of the foreign debt and the squeeze by the International Monetary Fund."

The unionist made an appeal to workers in other countries. "We've met auto workers from Brazil and Italy. We want to reach auto workers and other unionists in the United States and other countries.

"We're being attacked by the same bosses. So we have to learn from each other and fight together," Mulhall said.  
 
 
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