The Hot Autumn of 1969–70 is a term used for a series of large strikes in the factories and industrial centers of Northern Italy, in which workers demanded better pay and better conditions. During 1969 and 1970 there were over 440 hours of strikes in the region. The decrease in the flow of labour migration from Southern Italy had resulted in nearly full employment levels in the northern part of the country, meaning that the workforce there now had the leverage to start exercising its influence.
A sit-down strike is a labour strike and a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at factories or other centralized locations, take unauthorized or illegal possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations. By taking control of their workplaces, workers engaged in a sit-down demonstrate their power, build solidarity among themselves, prevent the deployment of strikebreakers or removal of industrial equipment, and cause cascading effects on the chain of production within and between factories. However, sit-down strikes are illegal in the vast majority of countries, complicating their use.
Piero Gobetti was an Italian journalist, intellectual, and anti-fascist. A radical and revolutionary liberal, he was an exceptionally active campaigner and critic in the crisis years in Italy after the First World War and into the early years of Fascist Italy.
A work-in is a form of direct action under which workers whose jobs are under threat resolve to remain in their place of employment and to continue producing, without pay. Their intention is usually to show that their place of work still has long-term viability or that it can be effectively self-managed by the workers.
The Biennio Rosso was a two-year period, between 1919 and 1920, of intense social conflict in Italy, following the First World War. The revolutionary period was followed by the violent reaction of the fascist blackshirts militia and eventually by the March on Rome of Benito Mussolini in 1922.
General elections were held in Italy on 16 November 1919. The fragmented Liberal governing coalition lost the absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, due to the success of the Italian Socialist Party and the Italian People's Party.
General elections were held in Italy on 15 May 1921. It was the first election in which the recently acquired regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Venezia Giulia, Zara and Lagosta island elected deputies, many of whom were from the Germanic and South Slavic ethnic groups.
As an act of protest, occupation is a strategy often used by social movements and other forms of collective social action in order to squat and hold public and symbolic spaces, buildings, critical infrastructure such as entrances to train stations, shopping centers, university buildings, squares, and parks. Opposed to a military occupation which attempts to subdue a conquered country, a protest occupation is a means to resist the status quo and advocate a change in public policy. Occupation attempts to use space as an instrument in order to achieve political and economic change, and to construct counter-spaces in which protesters express their desire to participate in the production and re-imagination of urban space. Often, this is connected to the right to the city, which is the right to inhabit and be in the city as well as to redefine the city in ways that challenge the demands of capitalist accumulation. That is to make public spaces more valuable to the citizens in contrast to favoring the interests of corporate and financial capital.
Italian anarchism as a movement began primarily from the influence of Mikhail Bakunin, Giuseppe Fanelli, Carlo Cafiero, and Errico Malatesta. Rooted in collectivist anarchism and social or socialist anarchism, it expanded to include illegalist individualist anarchism, mutualism, anarcho-syndicalism, and especially anarcho-communism. In fact, anarcho-communism first fully formed into its modern strain within the Italian section of the First International. Italian anarchism and Italian anarchists participated in the biennio rosso and survived Italian Fascism, with Italian anarchists significantly contributing to the Italian Resistance Movement. Platformism and insurrectionary anarchism were particularly common in Italian anarchism and continue to influence the movement today. The synthesist Italian Anarchist Federation appeared after the war, and autonomismo and operaismo especially influenced Italian anarchism in the second half of the 20th century.
The 1971 Harco work-in was an action undertaken by workers at a steel plant in Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia. The work-in was the culmination of a protracted industrial dispute between the owners of Harco Steel and the workers at the Campbelltown site. The dispute arose as a result of worker objections to the owners' practice of sacking and then rehiring workers to reduce costs during periods of low production.
Fiat Automobiles S.p.A. is an Italian automobile manufacturer, formerly part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and since 2021 a subsidiary of Stellantis through its Italian division Stellantis Europe. Fiat Automobiles was formed in January 2007 when Fiat S.p.A. reorganized its automobile business, and traces its history back to 1899, when the first Fiat automobile, the Fiat 4 HP, was produced.
Cesare Romiti was an Italian economist and businessman. He was best known as an executive of both state-owned firms and private companies, including Fiat and Alitalia. He acquired the nickname Il Duro referring to his management style while he was serving as the head of Fiat.
Workers' control is participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, communists, social democrats, distributists and Christian democrats, and has been combined with various socialist and mixed economy systems.
Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a defining characteristic of socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement, advocated variously by democratic, libertarian and market socialists as well as anarchists and communists.
Pietro Ferrero was an Italian anarchist and trade unionist.
Romano Alquati was an Italian sociologist, political theorist and activist. He was known for his work for Operaist journal Quaderni Rossi and his Marxist analysis of labour practices at Italian companies FIAT and Olivetti.
1917–1919 Brazil strike movement was a Brazilian industry and commerce strike starting in July 1917 in São Paulo, during World War I, promoting by anarchist-inspired workers' organizations allied with the libertarian press. From 1917 to 1919, a large strike movement shook the First Brazilian Republic, concentrated in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. It culminated in several general strikes in 1917 and an attempted anarchist uprising in November 1918. The 1917 general strike is considered the first general strike in the labor history of Brazil, and marks the beginning of the period known as the five red years.
The Boilermakers and Blacksmiths Society of Australia (BBS) was an Australian trade union representing boilermakers and blacksmiths between 1965 and 1972.
The Red Guards, also known as Proletarian Defense Formations, were a paramilitary organization affiliated with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and later the Communist Party of Italy (PCdI) during the Red Biennium of the Kingdom of Italy.
The term Bocci-bocci is an Italian linguistic corruption of the word Bolshevism, meaning to "Break everything", used particularly in Florence and Tuscany during the Biennio Rosso, in which there was a number of mass strikes against high costs of living, self-management experiments towards autarky through land and factory occupation, and in Turin and Milan, workers councils were formed with factory occupation under the leadership of anarcho-syndicalists.
