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FLORENCE – With this morning they will be 10 days since the last meal for the three workers of the former GKN who started the hunger strike as an extreme protest in the face of the lack of responses on the dispute from the institutions: first and foremost the government, which is asked to put the company under commissionership and has not paid salaries or redundancy payments for 6 months – the reason is that the factory would be occupied, but the Court has declared this behavior illegitimate in more than one sentence; secondly, the Region, which is asked to speed up the approval of the regional law proposal for a public consortium that could take over the plant.
Meanwhile, the permanent garrison continues with tents pitched in Piazza Indipendenza, where yesterday the situation was taken stock of, followed by a solidarity concert by the Bandabardò, at the end of which in the evening a spontaneous procession of around a thousand people headed towards via Cavour, where they stopped for about twenty minutes in front of the headquarters of the Regional Council. “Despite everything, it is a dispute that after three years, on any Wednesday, in any June, brought almost a thousand people to a procession in Florence at 11 pm – comments Matteo Moretti of the Factory Collective -. This serves to make us feel less alone and to make the institutions understand that the battle is not just that of a small group of workers now left, but there is a city that is close to us”. “Today the group leaders should meet – he explains again – and we await good news, at least for a meeting on the text of the law”.
Another solidarity event is scheduled for tomorrow: ua silent walk that will start at 5.30 pm from the basilica of San Miniato al Monte and end in Piazza Indipendenza after passing through the center. The initiative, promoted by the Isolotto Community and the Piagge Community with the participation of Father Bernardo Gianni, abbot of San Miniato al Monte, and other expressions of the Florentine church and citizens – is entitled “Work and the future, let’s walk together so as not to stand still”. The invitation explains: “Let’s walk together from San Miniato to Piazza Indipendenza because what happens to the workers of the ex-Gkn must not remain in silence, indifference, in inaction. We are concerned about the passing of the days which are putting even more to the test those workers who are on hunger strike in support of a collective dispute that has been going on for over 34 months and we express our support and closeness to all of them. We walk to support the request cthat salaries are paid (I have been without salaries for five months) and to ask the institutions and all the local subjects involved to give substance to the request for regional law, to the reindustrialization project, to popular share ownership. Let’s walk together so that everyone takes concrete steps.” And again: “Let’s walk together because what happens to the workers of the former Gkn concerns the whole city and the territory, it concerns the way in which work is understood, the relationship with nature and the future.
“It is inexplicable – comments bitterly Don Vincenzo Russo, former chaplain of Sollicciano and manager of the Casa Caciolle Aps shelter – this silence on the part of the Region”.
