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DESCRIPTION:On 10/20 Workers Of The World UNITE!  \n\nOur Red October: Stop Temp, 
 Contract, GIG Slave Labor & Union Busting  Around The World\n\nThis October 
 workers are on the march around the world. \n\nOn October 11 there will be 
 a general strike of workers at Fed-Ex, Amazon and other logistiics 
 companies in Italy by S.I. Cobus. These workers who are 85% immigrant have 
 faced union\nbusting and even the murder of a union activist by the bosses. 
 \nOn October 20th, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has called for 
 a general strike to:\n• Eradicate precarious work & Reform the labor law 
 to guarantee fundamental trade union rights for all!  \n• For a Just 
 Transition & Moratorium on dismissals/government responsibility to secure 
 jobs! \n• Strengthen public services & social protection!\nThe government 
 has also imprisoned the president of the KCTU Yang Kyung-soo after he led a 
 march of 8,000 workers in Seoul for health and safety and temporary 
 workers.\nOn October 27th Mineworkers Union of Namibia Rossiing Uranium 
 miner unoin branch leaders were fired by the state owned Chinese\nNational 
 Nuclear Corporation and workers at the mine and other companies are facing 
 union busting and being forced into contract labor which was mandatory 
 duriing the time that the apartheid regime ran Namibia.The government has 
 also shut off the water and power to their lawyer Hewat Beukes who also 
 represents other miners, trade unionists and the Fisherman United Of 
 Namibia\nBosses are imposing  slave labor conditions and these are  what 
 workers face around the world. We support all strikes and struggles in 
 every country and want to bring them together October\nincluding US UMWA 
 miners in Alabama, striking UBC Carpenters in Seattle.\nThis month long 
 series of actions will include workers in those countries where similar 
 struggles are going on so we can unite all workers\naround the world.\nTake 
 action a) send messages of solidarity b) picket on these dates at all 
 consulates and embassies around the world and also c) picket companies like 
 \nAmazon, Fed-ex, Uber and others that are forcing us into cheap labour 
 around the world.\n\n\nIn the Bay Area\nOctober 11, 2021 4:30 PM\nSan 
 Francisco Italian Consulate\n2590 Webster St.\nSan Francisco\n\nOctober 20, 
 2021 12 Noon PM\nKorean Consulate\n3500 Clay St.\nSan Francisco\n\nOctober 
 27, 2021\nChinese Consulate\n1450 Laguna St\n4:00 PM\n\nAn Injury To One Is 
 An Injury To All\n\nInitiated by\n\nS.I. Cobus 
 Italy\nhttp://sicobas.org\nMUN Rossing Branch Dismissed Union 
 Leaders\nhttps://ilscnamibia.wordpress.com\nWorkers International 
 Network\nhttps://www.onthebrink.online\nWorkers 
 International\nhttp://workersinternational.info\nUnited Front Committee For 
 A Labor Party UFCLP\nhttps://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa/\nHigher 
 Education Action Team HEAT\nhttps://www.ccsfheat.org\n\nSend video and 
 statements to\nlabormedia1@gmail.com\nPost Video 
 on\nhttps://www.facebook.com/InternationalLaborMediaNetwork\n\n\nHOUSE 
 ARRESTS OF ITALIAN SI CORBUS FEDEX 
 WORKERS\nhttps://en.labournet.tv/house-arrests-lifted\nitalienisch mit dt. 
 ut  | 13 min  |  2021  | hits: 84\nOn March 26, 2021, the SI Cobas 
 coordinators for Piacenza, Carlo and Arafat, were released from their 14 
 days long house arrests. They were part of a massive operation against the 
 italian base union, with house searches, deplacements, police brutality 
 against strike pickets, one 9-months prision sentence for a coordinator in 
 Bologna. \nOne of the freshly released, Carlo Pallavicini, holds an 
 improvised speach and points out a connection between the successful 
 struggles of the workers organized in SI Cobas and the current wave of 
 repression:\n\n"At month's end, at the turnstile, the mafia handed out 800 
 Euros in cash! Now, with us, there are regular contracts!"\n\nCurrently, 
 the unions fight for the renewal of the National Collective Agreement for 
 the logistics industry that ran out in 2019.\nIn addition, TNT-Fedex seems 
 to want to close down the warehouse in Piacenza to get rid of the militant 
 workforce.\n\nTnt/FedEx attack workers in Italy and SI Cobas, their union 
 call for solidarity Workers Hold Assemblies in Warehouses in 2020-We Will 
 Not Be 
 Slaves\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO1ntAsJ59U&t=347s\n\nhttp://sicobas.org/2020/05/14/internationalism-tnt-fedex-attack-workers-in-italy-and-si-cobas-their-union-call-for-solidarity/\n\nMaggio 
 14, 20200\n\nTNT/FEDEX ATTACKS WORKERS IN ITALY AND SI COBAS, THEIR 
 UNION\n\nCALL FOR SOLIDARITY\n\nWorkers are on strike at most of the main 
 TNT/FEDEX warehouses in Italy, following the dismissal of 66 temporary 
 workers -“supplied” by the Adecco temp agency – who have been working 
 at the Peschiera Borromeo warehouse\n(near Milan) for 5 years, and whom 
 TNT/FEDEX had agreed to hire as permanent staff starting May 1, 2020.\n\nAs 
 in other warehouses across Italy, workers organised with the SI Cobas union 
 responded to the danger caused by the pandemic by abstaining from work 
 until safe working conditions were implemented, and on April 30-May 1 they 
 took part to a national strike against the governmental policy that set 
 strict regulations on individuals’ mobility, while setting loose 
 regulations for workplace safety, with no penalties for non-complying 
 companies. \n\nThousands of companies were allowed to re-open on the basis 
 of a self-statement that they were “essential”. In industrial areas the 
 outbreak has been much larger than in the rest of the country, with many 
 casualties among factory and warehouse workers, besides healthcare workers. 
 \n\nOn MayDay also the 66 temps working at the Peschiera Borromeo warehouse 
 joined the strike of permanent TNT/FEDEX workers. \n\nThe company responded 
 saying it did not need any more the labour of the 66 workers because of the 
 coronavirus crisis, and would not comply with the agreement. The 66 workers 
 were therefore left jobless.\n\nAll the other permanent workers of 
 TNT/FEDEX Peschiera Borromeo, starting Sunday night, May 2nd, struck in 
 solidarity with the 66 fellow workers, with whom they have been sharing 
 work for 5 years, and occupied the warehouse. \n\nOther warehouses struck 
 in their support, and for furloughed workers to be paid full pay in 
 advance, without waiting for the social security institute (INPS) check and 
 to obtain a workplace safety agreement through the union to reduce the 
 risks of contamination from Covid-19, as signed with several other 
 companies.\n\nThere was an easy solution to the labor dispute: hiring the 
 66 workers as agreed, and putting part of the exceeding personnel in 
 “Cassa Integrazione”, i.e. on paid leave – paid by INPS, according to 
 the governmental provisions to face\nthe crisis followed to the 
 pandemic.\n\nBut the response of the company was a declaration of war on 
 the workers and their union. FedEx, the U.S. parent company of TNT, took 
 over the management of the dispute, with the purpose to destroy the 
 militant union SI Cobas.\n\nFedEx must have some special relationship with 
 the Italian government, because the Interior Ministry sent 180 policemen 
 and Carabinieri to clear the Peschiera Borromeo warehouse from the strikers 
 [http://sicobas.org/2020/05/05/italia-fedex-tnt-le-forze-dellordine-sgomberano-i-lavoratori-in-sciopero-ecco-la-fase-2-tra-licenziamenti-e-repressione/].\n\nWorkers 
 at most TNT/FEDEX warehouses in Italy, including Turin, Brescia, Piacenza, 
 Bologna, Rome and Naples have gone on strike last week, paralizing most 
 TNT/FEDEX activity in the whole country, according to the SI Cobas motto: 
 “Toccano uno, toccano tutti”(“An injury to one is an injury to 
 all”), but the U.S. FedEx bosses prefer to lose millions than come to an 
 agreement with SI Cobas.\n\nThe company also aims at using the struggle as 
 a pretext to carry out a drastic restructuring, with closure of less 
 profitable businesses and warehouses. \n\nWorkers have gone back to work on 
 Monday, May 11 to prevent an imminent company lockout, but they are not 
 going to abandon the struggle. \n\nWe call TNT/FEDEX and FedEx workers in 
 all countries for solidarity actions with the struggle of TNT/FEDEX workers 
 in Italy against dismissals, and against FedEx union-bashing.\n\nS.I. 
 Cobas\n\nItaly Fight Fedex Piacenza, extending the struggle against 
 anti-worker repression\n\ninternaz.sicobas@gmail.com\n\nOn Wednesday 10 
 March, at 6am, 21 police squads raided the homes of 21 FedEx workers and SI 
 Cobas union organisers. They searched their homes, seized mobile phones, 
 computers and clothing. They placed two SI Cobas organisers under house 
 arrest, notified 5 workers of a ban from the municipality of Piacenza and 6 
 (immigrant) workers of the start of the procedure to revoke their residence 
 permits. The charges are: private violence, aggravated personal injuries, 
 resistance to public officials, and more. The accused are in total 29. They 
 also imposed fines amounting to 13,200 euro for violating anti-covid 
 regulations (curfew, social distancing).\n\nAn operation of this magnitude, 
 organised with the direct participation of the Ministry of the Interior, 
 and measures of this gravity by the judiciary have so far only been seen 
 for two types of crime: mafia association and (in other times) terrorism. 
 Now they are being applied to workers and trade union organisers guilty 
 of... trade union struggle, defence of strike action.\n\nWhat are these 
 workers and organisers guilty of? Of having defended, on the night of 
 February 1st, their 13-day strike at the FedEx warehouse in Piacenza, 
 against the attack on the picket line conducted by nearly a hundred 
 policemen with tear gas canisters thrown at workers sitting on the ground, 
 and batons. They are guilty of having immediately re-established the picket 
 line with the support of workers from other warehouses; guilty of having 
 obtained through their struggle, in the subsequent negotiations at the 
 Prefecture, all their wage demands, and reassurance of employment at the 
 FedEx hub in Piacenza after FedEx had announced 6,300 redundancies 
 Europe-wide and dismissed 667 workers in Liège (Belgium). SI Cobas FedEx 
 workers in Italy have shared solidarity with Fedex Belgian workers.\n\nThe 
 videos of that resistance, the agreement won, gave courage to thousands of 
 workers, increasing their determination to fight.\n\nThe government is 
 planning to unblock redundancies after June. In view of the tens of 
 thousands of workers who will be forced to fight to defend their jobs, it 
 could not allow the example of the Fedex workers in Piacenza to mark the 
 resumption of the class struggle. It decided to hit the workers who dared 
 to resist the police aggression in order to terrorize everyone. Hence the 
 house arrest of two organisers. Hence the ban on residence, which means 
 having to leave your home, look for makeshift accommodation, not being 
 allowed to go to work, and the risk of losing both your salary and your 
 job. And this is the reason for the threat of withdrawing the residence 
 permit, which would mean the possibility of expulsion from Italy, together 
 with one's family, for those who have been living here for 10-20 years, 
 with children born here... The last one was the Security Decree issued by 
 the Lega-5Stars government, maintained by the government with the 
 Democratic Party, and now applied by the Draghi government, which includes 
 almost all parties from the right to the left.This is not an isolated 
 episode, but a sign of the government's desire to nip in the bud workers' 
 protests, terrorise workers fighting to defend their conditions, and hit 
 the organisers of SI Cobas, the union that more than any other in recent 
 years has held high the banner of class struggle.\n\nIt is no coincidence 
 that on the same day as the searches in Piacenza, in Prato (near Florence) 
 a riot police unit attacked and beat up a picket line of striking Pakistani 
 workers at the Texprint textile factory, who for two months have been 
 fighting against a slave-like working week of 12 hours for 7 days (84 
 hours!). That same morning, the newspapers headlined the banning of 
 the\n\n\n(Chinese) owners of Texprint from participating in public tenders, 
 due to their involvement in mafia affairs. The police attacking enslaved 
 workers who revolt against a mafia boss: we are not surprised because it 
 has happened many times, but the timing is not accidental. And this happens 
 while in Modena 87 workers and supporters of the Alcar1 (meat processing) 
 struggle in 2016 (also led by SI Cobas) are being tried, also guilty of 
 resisting tear gas fired at eye level and opposing their bodies to 
 batons.\n\nThe Piacenza Public Prosecutor's Office maintains that this was 
 not a trade union dispute - the only real trade unions would be the 
 official ones, which no longer make real strikes - and that therefore forms 
 of struggle such as strike pickets are a crime. This is the continuation of 
 a political offensive against strikes, which aims to give only the official 
 unions the right to call strikes.\n\nThe response to this escalation of 
 repression was the immediate one-day strike at FedEx group nationally and 
 for all workers in the province of Piacenza, and two hours in other 
 workplaces; and most meaningful, the large demonstration held in Piacenza 
 on Saturday 13, with the combative participation of SI Cobas workers, but 
 also of many supporters, many young people, who despite the Covid-19 wanted 
 to stand against repression.\n\nFedEx, emboldened by the state repression 
 against SI Cobas workers, has emptied its Piacenza hub since March 15, 
 shifting hundreds of thousands packages to other warehouses and even to 
 competitors the packages: this amounts to a lockout, which is forbidden 
 under Italian law. Workers in many warehouses are refusing to handle goods 
 shifted from Piacenza.\n\nIf the government's anti-worker offensive, by 
 means of the police and the judiciary, instead of terrorising workers, 
 especially immigrant workers, has the effect of widening the front of the 
 struggle to other sectors and organisations, the repression will prove to 
 be a boomerang as it happened with the attempt by the police and the Modena 
 Public Prosecutor's Office to incriminate the national SI Cobas 
 coordinator, Aldo Milani, on charges that in court turned out to be 
 fabricated.\n\nSI Cobas is one of the promoters of an Anti-capitalist 
 Action Pact and the Assembly of Combative Workers to carry out initiatives 
 of struggle on a common platform, beyond trade union affiliations. On 17 
 April the Action Pact will hold a conference on the pandemic, and on 
 experiences of struggle and initiatives to be taken from a working class 
 point of view. For May Day, demonstrations will be organised in several 
 cities and an international conference is planned for May 2, of 
 organisations sharing the need to work for the international union of 
 workers in their struggle against capital. The strength of workers is in 
 their union, beyond factory gates, beyond their trade and their industry, 
 beyond borders.\n\nSI Cobas - Italy \n\nOn Wednesday 10 March, at 6am, 21 
 police squads raided the homes of 21 FedEx workers and SI Cobas union 
 organisers. They searched their homes, seized mobile phones, computers and 
 clothing. They placed two SI Cobas organisers under house arrest, notified 
 5 workers of a ban from the municipality of Piacenza and 6 (immigrant) 
 workers of the start of the procedure to revoke their residence permits. 
 The charges are: private violence, aggravated personal injuries, resistance 
 to public officials, and more. The accused are in total 29. They also 
 imposed fines amounting to 13,200 euro for violating anti-covid regulations 
 (curfew, social distancing).\n\nAn operation of this magnitude, organised 
 with the direct participation of the Ministry of the Interior, and measures 
 of this gravity by the judiciary have so far only been seen for two types 
 of crime: mafia association and (in other times) terrorism. Now they are 
 being applied to workers and trade union organisers guilty of... trade 
 union struggle, defence of strike action.\n\nWhat are these workers and 
 organisers guilty of? Of having defended, on the night of February 1st, 
 their 13-day strike at the FedEx warehouse in Piacenza, against the attack 
 on the picket line conducted by nearly a hundred policemen with tear gas 
 canisters thrown at workers sitting on the ground, and batons. They are 
 guilty of having immediately re-established the picket line with the 
 support of workers from other warehouses; guilty of having obtained through 
 their struggle, in the subsequent negotiations at the Prefecture, all their 
 wage demands, and reassurance of employment at the FedEx hub in Piacenza 
 after FedEx had announced 6,300 redundancies Europe-wide and dismissed 667 
 workers in Liège (Belgium). SI Cobas FedEx workers in Italy have shared 
 solidarity with Fedex Belgian workers.\n\nThe videos of that resistance, 
 the agreement won, gave courage to thousands of workers, increasing their 
 determination to fight.\n\nThe government is planning to unblock 
 redundancies after June. In view of the tens of thousands of workers who 
 will be forced to fight to defend their jobs, it could not allow the 
 example of the Fedex workers in Piacenza to mark the resumption of the 
 class struggle. It decided to hit the workers who dared to resist the 
 police aggression in order to terrorize everyone. Hence the house arrest of 
 two organisers. Hence the ban on residence, which means having to leave 
 your home, look for makeshift accommodation, not being allowed to go to 
 work, and the risk of losing both your salary and your job. And this is the 
 reason for the threat of withdrawing the residence permit, which would mean 
 the possibility of expulsion from Italy, together with one's family, for 
 those who have been living here for 10-20 years, with children born here... 
 The last one was the Security Decree issued by the Lega-5Stars government, 
 maintained by the government with the Democratic Party, and now applied by 
 the Draghi government, which includes almost all parties from the right to 
 the left.This is not an isolated episode, but a sign of the government's 
 desire to nip in the bud workers' protests, terrorise workers fighting to 
 defend their conditions, and hit the organisers of SI Cobas, the union that 
 more than any other in recent years has held high the banner of class 
 struggle.\n\nIt is no coincidence that on the same day as the searches in 
 Piacenza, in Prato (near Florence) a riot police unit attacked and beat up 
 a picket line of striking Pakistani workers at the Texprint textile 
 factory, who for two months have been fighting against a slave-like working 
 week of 12 hours for 7 days (84 hours!). That same morning, the newspapers 
 headlined the banning of the\n\n(Chinese) owners of Texprint from 
 participating in public tenders, due to their involvement in mafia affairs. 
 The police attacking enslaved workers who revolt against a mafia boss: we 
 are not surprised because it has happened many times, but the timing is not 
 accidental. And this happens while in Modena 87 workers and supporters of 
 the Alcar1 (meat processing) struggle in 2016 (also led by SI Cobas) are 
 being tried, also guilty of resisting tear gas fired at eye level and 
 opposing their bodies to batons.\n\nThe Piacenza Public Prosecutor's Office 
 maintains that this was not a trade union dispute - the only real trade 
 unions would be the official ones, which no longer make real strikes - and 
 that therefore forms of struggle such as strike pickets are a crime. This 
 is the continuation of a political offensive against strikes, which aims to 
 give only the official unions the right to call strikes.\n\nThe response to 
 this escalation of repression was the immediate one-day strike at FedEx 
 group nationally and for all workers in the province of Piacenza, and two 
 hours in other workplaces; and most meaningful, the large demonstration 
 held in Piacenza on Saturday 13, with the combative participation of SI 
 Cobas workers, but also of many supporters, many young people, who despite 
 the Covid-19 wanted to stand against repression.\n\nFedEx, emboldened by 
 the state repression against SI Cobas workers, has emptied its Piacenza hub 
 since March 15, shifting hundreds of thousands packages to other warehouses 
 and even to competitors the packages: this amounts to a lockout, which is 
 forbidden under Italian law. Workers in many warehouses are refusing to 
 handle goods shifted from Piacenza.\n\nIf the government's anti-worker 
 offensive, by means of the police and the judiciary, instead of terrorising 
 workers, especially immigrant workers, has the effect of widening the front 
 of the struggle to other sectors and organisations, the repression will 
 prove to be a boomerang as it happened with the attempt by the police and 
 the Modena Public Prosecutor's Office to incriminate the national SI Cobas 
 coordinator, Aldo Milani, on charges that in court turned out to be 
 fabricated.\n\nSI Cobas is one of the promoters of an Anti-capitalist 
 Action Pact and the Assembly of Combative Workers to carry out initiatives 
 of struggle on a common platform, beyond trade union affiliations. On 17 
 April the Action Pact will hold a conference on the pandemic, and on 
 experiences of struggle and initiatives to be taken from a working class 
 point of view. For May Day, demonstrations will be organised in several 
 cities and an international conference is planned for May 2, of 
 organisations sharing the need to work for the international union of 
 workers in their struggle against capital. The strength of workers is in 
 their union, beyond factory gates, beyond their trade and their industry, 
 beyond borders.\n\nSI Cobas - Italy \n\nhttp://sicobas.org\n\n"We're not 
 criminals” Italian Si Corbus Worker Speaks 
 Out\n\nhttps://en.labournet.tv/were-not-criminals\nitalian with engl. subs, 
  | 7 min  |  2021\n\nRuben, a SI Cobas union activist, talks about 
 repression against workers and union officials in Piacenza in March 
 2021.\n\nThe attacks follow successful striks in the logistics industry 
 that resulted in compliance of national sector-level agreements and 
 improvement agreements and in the case of TNT-Fedex even terminations were 
 repelled. Most of the time these struggles are lead to put into practice 
 what's already law, e.g. sector-level wages, subsequently guaranteed 
 working hours, correct payrolls. Before SI Cobas appeared approximately 10 
 years ago illegal conditions, especially for the majoritarian migrant 
 workers in the Italian logistics sector but also in other sector, were the 
 norm.\n\nIn addition to the state's oppression that Ruben describes in this 
 interview, on 23 March 2021 a court sentenced the regional SI Cobas 
 coordinator from Bologna, Simon Carpeggiani, to nine months in prison 
 because he joined a picket in Ferrara in 2014. The picket was repeatedly 
 attacked by fascists and the Lega Nord party at that time.\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/10/04/18845390.php
SUMMARY:Support Italian Fed-Ex & Amazon Workers General Strike & Workers Unite On Red October
LOCATION:San Francisco Italian Consulate\n2590 Webster St.\nSan Francisco\n
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/10/04/18845390.php
DTSTART:20211011T230000Z
DTEND:20211012T000000Z
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