A new massacre of workers in a factory fire
A clothing factory in an industrial zone in the Italian town of Prato burned down on Sunday 1 December: seven Chinese workers died and others were injured. It was not an "accident", but an actual murder committed in the name of competitiveness and profit of capitalists.
TV and newspapers said that in many Chinese factories in Prato working conditions are slavery-like, with exhausting hours and no security measures.
But they carefully avoided saying that the culprits are not only the Chinese entrepreneurs, but also, and above all, the major Italian and Western clothing brands, because these Chinese factories often work as sub-contractors of the bigger ones. It is the big corporations like Nike, Adidas, Dolce&Gabbana and Benetton that dictate market and production rules at a global scale. Together with Prato’s Chinese entrepreneurs, and before them, it’s big corporations that swell their profits by super-exploiting Chinese immigrant workers in Italy.
After the massacre, the government representatives said they were sorry and promised to act in order to “resolve and heal” the situation. Pure hypocrisy! It is just the racist laws and policies of the Italian and Western governments that keep immigrant workers under constant blackmail and threat, compelling many of them to be “illegal” and “undocumented” workers, and therefore putting them in a position of often having to "accept" poor and dangerous working conditions.
But the crocodile tears poured by the media and the institutions also have other objectives:
We must reject this poisonous campaign!
Every day the capitalists and their Governments resort to blackmailing workers by putting them in competition against one another. Italians against immigrants, workers of a nation and a continent against workers from another country and continent. In order to defend their own conditions and to protect health at work, it is necessary that workers break this downward spiral of competition. But thinking to do it together with one’s “own” nation’s entrepreneurs, and against other workers, would mean simply to dig one’s grave.
The way to defend ourselves is completely different. We must work to build the unity of struggle and organization among Italian and immigrant workers against the Government and against the employers. We must fight together for the full rights of all immigrant workers (no matter if Chinese or non-Chinese). We must start seeing the workers of other countries and other continents not as competitors "to beat", but as allies with which to start to commonly organize against globalized capitalism.