Oral History Society

ITALIAN STEEL WORKERS IN THE ERA OF SUPERMECHANISATION AND GLOBALISATION:

WHAT KINDS OF CREATIVITY?
Author(s): Alesscmdro Portelli
Source: Oral History, Vol. 37, No. 2, COMMUNITY AND CREATIVITY (AUTUMN 2009), pp.
71-75
Published by: Oral History Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40650294
Accessed: 05-04-2017 13:50 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Oral History Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Oral History

This content downloaded from 109.146.79.55 on Wed, 05 Apr 2017 13:50:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 ITALIAN STEEL WORKERS
IN THE ERA OF SUPER-
MECHANISATION AND
GLOBALISATION: WHAT
KINDS OF CREATIVITY?

by Alessandro Portelli

This article draws on an ongoing project on the development and memory ABSTRACT
of
a workers' struggle in Temi, against the closing of the electrical steel plant, the -
heart not just of the steel workers but of the town's own pride. As theKEY WORDS:
Temi
work;
workers fight for their jobs, in another factory owned by the same multinational,
creativity;
ThuyssenKrupp, a fire bums seven workers alive. How does the consciousness steel workers;
of today's workers, of their sense of power and creativity, respond to globalisation;
such
changing work technology, relations and economic globalisation? Italy

What kinds of creativity remain for workers in a specific place and, on the other hand, its
today in heavy industry, in the era of super- exercise spreads on a global scale.
mechanisation and globalisation? To address So this factory in Terni, which had always
this question, I'd like to share with you part of perceived itself very much on a local scale,
an ongoing project on globalisation and work- defined by the mountain valley that surrounds
ers' identity in Terni, a steel town in Central the town, suddenly finds itself to be a part of a
Italy, which has been the focus of much of my very broad global world: power and control are
earlier work. far removed, but their impact and conse-
The steel works in Terni were established in quences are still felt very locally.1
1885, and remained in public ownership until Two events generated the project on which
1994, when they were privatized and sold to a I am working. First, in 2004 ThuyssenKrupp
German multinational ThuyssenKrupp, which announced that they would close the electrical
owns factories in the United States, Mexico, steel plant in Terni, which is the most techno-
India, Germany, France, South Africa, Spain, logically advanced part of the factory and a
and a number of other countries. As part of the source of pride to its workers and the city at
deal, ThuyssenKrupp also acquired a smaller large. The announcement, with the looming
steel factory in Turin. Incidentally, I think that loss of 900 jobs, generated a huge general
'German multinational' is a misnomer: if it's
strike that literally closed down the town, and
German it cannot be multinational, and vice was followed by three weeks of picketing and
versa. But it describes very well the way in work stoppages. Eventually, after another
which, on the one hand, power is concentrated strike, ThyssenKrupp did close the electrical

Autumn 2009 ORAL HISTORY 71

This content downloaded from 109.146.79.55 on Wed, 05 Apr 2017 13:50:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 steel plant but, at least for the time being, no
jobs were lost.
Then, in 2007, ThyssenKrupp also
announced that they would close the factory in
Turin. While the process of closure was going
on, safety was all but abandoned. Many of the
more skilled and experienced workers left, so
the tasks and hours of the remaining workforce
were stretched. Partly as a result of this, when
a routine fire broke in the factory on 6 Decem-
ber 2007, it turned into a tragedy in which
seven men were burned alive. It was the worst
industrial tragedy in recent Italian history, and
it drew attention to the fact that in this suppos-
edly post-industrial age, work-related deaths
average three a day in Italy.
So this is the background. Let me quote
from an interview with one of the workers who
survived the fire in Turin, Giovanni Pignalosa.
He is 38 years old, was born in Naples and
migrated to Turin, and has two children. He
begins by talking about the paradoxes of power
in a contemporary steel works:
You get a sense of what it's like to walk by
a factory - you look at the wall, you see this
red brick wall and you wonder, This is a
factory, I wonder what they do in there, I
wonder what is in there?' And then when
you get a job in it, you find yourself in a
place where you understand what the life
of an ant is like.
Why do I say this? Because if you put
yourself in the position of the ant, it sees
these huge humans walking around -
boom, boom, boom - and the moment I
walked into this shop, I felt that I was part
of a place where you understand how an
ant sees us. You go near these machines
and these machine are to you what we are
to the ant, ten to one, a hundred to one, a
thousand to one.
Then you live the factory, you live inside
the factory, and you realise that it is a world
that gives you a satisfaction inside which is
beyond all imagination. Because you, a
modest, a humble person, you're satisfied
with small things, and you realise that with
that steel factory, with that cold roll line, you
are making this fucking country go round,
which is in the hands of people who don't
now what the fuck to do with it, who don't
know how run it, how to take it forward.2
And then Pignalosa talked about what
happened on the night of 7 December. He
came in for the night shift, lingered a while
talking with his colleagues about the looming I talk about this story because it t
closure and loss of their jobs, made a detour to directly the question of creativity and i
the coffee machine... uality and the way it is played out in
72 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2009
This content downloaded from 109.146.79.55 on Wed, 05 Apr 2017 13:50:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
And this young man runs up to me and
says, 'Giovanni, Giovanni, come! Line
number 5 blew up. They're all dead.' At
first I thought he was kidding, and I said,
'You don't joke about these things' but
then I looked at his face, and his face was
ashen, and his eyes were gaping and filled
with tears, and I realised it was no joke.
So I ran towards line number 5, and the
first person I saw was the foreman, and . . .
my first reaction was, 'I have to run,
because we're all going to die here'. ... He
was saying, 'Giovanni, please tell my
family. Don't scare them, please, Giovanni.
I am counting on you Giovanni'. And he
was repeating these words, and I was
thinking, 'I've got to run away. This thing's
going to blow up. We're all going to die'.
... So I don't know what made me stay.
Then, ... he said, 'Giovanni, you're the
oldest here. What are we going to do?' So
... I turned around and I said, 'Okay, take
them to the ambulance outside'. Then I ran
back to the line, and ... I didn't think of
anything, my mind went dark, and all I
thought was, 'I've got to go and get the
boys out'.
And then when I got to the place where
the fire had started, by the mill that was on
fire, I realised I had found a scene before
my eyes that was blood-curdling, blood-
curdling because you have in front of you
people whose body has all turned to coal
and they're alive, and they're not in pain,
because after the second layer of skin has
burned, all the nerves also burn, so they
don't feel the pain. So there were three of
them standing, and three of them lying on
the ground, and I looked at them, and I
spoke to them, and they knew me by my
voice, and the first thing they asked was,
'Giovanni, what happened to us? We can't
see anything. What happened to our face?'
And how do you explain to somebody that
they're unrecognisable, that you have no
skin, how can you go to a person and tell
him your ears are turning into dust, your
skin is falling to the ground?
And the first thing I thought was, you
know, 'I'll pick them up and I'll take them
out'. But then I didn't know how to touch
them. I don't know if I touch them, would
my hands go through them? And I wanted
to hug them and I ... couldn't hug them.
And then others came, and the paramedics
came.
mill. You have the horror of the tragedy, the it - you run these machines, you keep the
looming presence of death in the factory. But country going.
also, you have the first part of the story, the However, you do not dominate the
complex impact of the factory on subjectivity machines individually, but as part of a social
and on the imagination. On the one hand, this group and a social process. All the workers and
environment, with these huge machines and unions in Terni insisted on one point: 'We
enormous spaces, dwarfs you: you feel like an make the best steel in the world, because we
ant. On the other hand, it empowers you: you have been making steel for a hundred years,
are the one who runs and controls these huge and because we have invested our know-how
machines, and through them you are the one as workers and the creativity and expertise of
that keeps this country going. our engineers and technicians'; 'we have
With the generation of steel workers that I invented a new technology that allows you to
interviewed before in the seventies/eighties, make electrical steel at a lower cost and better
when I asked, 'What was the impact of the quality. '
factory when you first went in?', they would So ultimately what is creative is not so
say, 'Well, normal.' Their parents and grand- much the individual as the industrial process
parents had worked there, they knew all about in itself, and the human beings that make it
it before they went in, so it was just what they possible, from the technical cadre to the
expected. But this is a younger generation, workers on the line: 'Steel is a complicated
most of the workers in Terni were hired technical thing where, depending on your
between 1999 and 2002, and they were part ofcustomers' orders, you have to inject different
a generation that was more educated, that hadcomponents in different doses, and a lot of this
expectations of upward mobility and did not- the dosing of components into the kiln - is
done by individuals that have to really know
take it for granted that their lives would be in
the factory.3 So when they talk about the firsthow to handle...' So, there is still pride - at
impact of the factory, they evince a sense of least, in part of the work force - in being the
wonder and fascination: ones that handle the fire and the steel. A
woman I interviewed said, 'I still have the text
The first time I walked into these huge message that my husband texted me the first
sheds, they frightened you, because, you night he worked in the steelworks, and it says,
know, you see this huge press that turns "Here I am in the university of the working-
this big ingot into sheets: ... I've been to class.'"5 It may sound outdated, but at least
New York a number of times and, you some of the people in there still feel that way.
know, you get off the plane, and I stood And part of the resentment among Terni
there for an hour looking at these huge workers is that, while shutting the plant,
skyscrapers, everything's big, everything's ThyssenKrupp kept the patent to the special
huge, and, you know, the factory is the OGH steel that had been developed and
same. patented in Terni. Not only had the plant been
closed,
Once I got in, I couldn't find my way but their very creativity had been
out,
and you stand there gaping, andstolen, say, appropriated
This by outsiders and taken
is incredible! This is beautiful'. Because away.
you see all these machines moving huge Giovanni Pignalosa's narrative also displays
pieces. It's awesome! . . . The melting of the another kind of creativity we haven't really
steel is beautiful, the process is unimagin- discussed much here, perhaps because we
able. There are things there that are beau- almost take it for granted, which is 'verbal
tiful to look at. This is ... this frightens you creativity'. He is trying to describe a reality I
and excites you. This is awesome.4 have never seen or experienced, and to make me
see it through the power of language. Their
So the sense of wonder combines with a descriptions of the impact of the factory are full
sense of beauty, and with a sense of terror - of
a similes and metaphors - it's like a city, like
state of mind not unlike what romantic New York, even it's like hell. They make a great
effort to reach the imagination through a
aesthetic theory, from Kant to Blake, called 'the
sublime', the feeling of man's smallness in creative
the use of language and vision, in order to
confrontation with nature. You are just an convey
ant, the meaning of that experience. And they
just an insect in front of the dimension of manage
this to do that because they share in a
technological universe, frightful and beautifulcultural capital that is linguistic and narrative as
at the same time. The difference, however,well is as professional and technological. There
that in this case the source of the sublime is have
not been great storytellers among Terni 's steel
natural or divine, but man-made, and while it
workers in the past, and some of that tradition
dwarfs you at the same time you also dominate
is still alive among the younger workers of today.

Autumn 2009 ORAL HISTORY 73

This content downloaded from 109.146.79.55 on Wed, 05 Apr 2017 13:50:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 The general strike in 2004 was itself, in a icant and empowers you at the same time. One
way, an experiment in linguistic creativity and man on a picket line told me, 'We're nothing
communication. As soon the news was out that but drops on the ocean'; but his colleague
the company was closing the electrical steel replied, 'if we stop production, the effect is felt
plant - which they saw as the beginning of the all over Europe... If we stop, Renault stops'.10
demise of the whole factory - the workers One last metaphor. I talked to one of the
marched to the place where the managers were leaders of the strike in 2004, Nevio Brunori,
meeting with the unions and the mayor, and who was very disappointed with the way it all
they tried to beat up the managers - just as ended, the compromise between saving the jobs
some of their fathers and grandfathers had done (for the time being) and closing the plant. He
in the general strike of 1953.6 There was this had two things to say. One, again, is about size:
amazing scene where they were having a buffet 'From the beginning,' he said, 'I knew this was
- Terni has a wonderful tradition of pastries - David versus Goliath. It's an unequal fight, but,
and they picked up the cakes and started throw- you know, at least David won once! But then
ing them at the ThyssenKrupp brass - in fact, what happened was that the Goliaths multi-
my first chapter will be titled The Night of the plied, and the Church and the government . . .
Flying Cakes.' And after they were through so it was one David against ten, fifteen
doing that, the next thing they did was to sit Goliaths. We didn't have a chance'. And then
down on the Al motorway that connects Rome he said:
to Milan, and on the railway track. They literally
split the country in two, and the reason they did We should have known, or at least the
it was that they wanted to communicate. They union should have known, that they drove
said, 'Unless this struggle is noticed, seen us to these extraordinary forms of behav-
beyond the valley in which we are, we're dead'.7 iour with this two months of picketing,
So that action was also a linguistic act. stopping the trains, stopping the motorway,
This in fact was also a battle over the stopping the city, and then nothing came of
meaning of language and words. After it, theand I blame the unions for driving us to
workers stopped production and picketed this the high level of consciousness, of struggle,
factory, ThuyssenKrupp announced that of creativity, for nothing. We might as well
workers at factories that were connected with have signed the agreement right away, and
it would be 'set at liberty' - meaning laid off. I would have been spared two months of
So I remember at the rally they had huge chilly nights on the picket line.11
banners saying, 'Why don't you set free the
inmates at Sabbione, too?', that is, the local jail. I think, ultimately, that this sense of disap-
There's a tradition in Terni, called Cantamag- pointment, a huge dramatic struggle that ended
gio, a May Day Parade of floats, where they sing in a weak compromise, is a great metaphor for
dialect songs and such folkloric things. It was the fate of the Left. Let me explain. In 1953,
invented by the local elite in the early 1900s as when the workers in Terni built barricades and
a response to the industrialisation that was fought the police over 3,000 layoffs, one of
being dumped upon the town from outside.8 So their songs said, 'The great victory is not far,
it was invented as an anti-industrial tradition, workers, keep marching on'.12 They were losing
but then was taken over by the workers, and the their jobs but they still saw it as a step to a new
floats represented different parts of the factory. society, and themselves as the vanguard of a
So, at the general strike rally they brought out better world. In 2004 and 2005, the workers
big puppets that ride on Cantamaggio floats - did exactly the same things - attacked the
including a Statue of Liberty with a sign about managers, picketed the factory, stopped the
the workers that had been 'set at liberty,' and a trains and the motorway... - but what had
long-nosed Pinocchio renamed with the name changed was the language. There was no talk
of one of company managers. On Carnival day, of 'great victory' on the horizon. The new
workers walked up and down Main Street world is not on the agenda. They're only
wearing ThuySSenKrupp armbands with the desperately trying to hold on to what they have.
double S as in the SS, and sporting a Hitler-style Karl Marx once said of the Paris Commune
moustache.9 that its greatness was in the attempt to 'storm
But they also made a point of reusing local heaven.' And what the Left is always guilty of is
knowledge in the context of globalisation. Ulti- that it keeps storming heaven, or talking about
mately, the theme in all this story has to do storming heaven, and never conquering it.
with size - insect to man, man to machine, Nevio Brunori 's wry final comments ultimately
local to global. You're small, but you're part of means: we might as well even stop trying.
something big, and the fact that you're small Which, for the time being at least, sounds like
and part of something big, makes you insignif- an epitaph to a century of struggle and hope.

74 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2009

This content downloaded from 109.146.79.55 on Wed, 05 Apr 2017 13:50:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
NOTES fesa urbana: il Cantamaggio temano',
5* Interviews with Ran ero Onori, born in Terni,

1 970, steel worker, recorded by Alessandro

I For background on the history of Terni and its Quaderni Storici, n , 1987, pp 901-914.
steel works, see Alessandro Portelli, Biografia di Portelli 20 February 2009; and with Luisa 9. Portelli, 2005.
una citt. Storia e racconto. Terni 831-1 985, Longhi (pseudonym), born in Lugnano in I O. Conversation with unidentified pickets at
Turin: Einaudi, 1985; Alessandro Portelli, The Teveri na (Terni), 1 961 , flower-shop owner, Tubificio Terni, 21 February 2005.
Death of Luigi Trastulli and other Stories. Form recorded by Alessandro Portelli, Lugnano, 11. Interview with Nevio Brunori, born in

2 May 2008.
and Meaning in Oral History, Albany, NY: New Terni, 1954, steel worker, recorded by
York State University Press, 1 991 . 6. Alessandro Portelli, 'Memoria e Alessandro Portelli, Terni, 1 8 March and

2. Interview with Giovanni Pignalosa, born in globalizzazione: la lotta contro la chiusura 29 May 2008.
Naples, 1 970, steel worker, recorded by degli Acciai Speciali a Terni, 2004-2005', 12. Composed and sung by Dante Bartolini,
Alessandro Portelli, Rome, 17 March 2008. Quaderni Storici, n 1 20, March 2005, born in Costei del Lago (Terni) 1918, steel
pp 735-51.
3. Alessandro Portelli, Acciai Speciali. Terni, la worker and farmer, recorded by Valentino

ThyssenKrupp, la globalizzazione, Rome: 7. Interview with Luciano Breni (pseudonym), Paparelli, Terni, 17 March 1 974; see Valentino
Donzelli, 2008, pp 8693. born in Lugnano in Teveri na (Terni), 1 959, steel Paparelli and Alessandro Portelli, eds, La
worker, rcorded by Alessandro Portelli, Terni,
4. Interview with Claudio Cipolla, born in Terni, Vainer ina ternana. Un'esperienza di ricerca
1 977, steel worker, recorded by Alessandro February 2004. intervento, LP record, Milan: Dischi del Sole,

Portelli, Terni, 2 February 2008. 8* Stefano Cavazza, Trasformazioni di una 1975.

I ! I Wi i*] [' M
kt'fll i I AMMi i ai CONFERENCE 2010
[Record] [Create]:
ORAL HISTORY IN ART,
CRAFT, AND DESIGN
at the Victoria and Albert Museum
London, 2-3 July 2010
In association with the Victoria and Albert Museum London, National Life Stories
at the British Library, Camberwell College of Arts (University of the Arts London),
and the University of the West of England, Bristol.
Proposals are invited: closing date 30 November 2009. Details online at:
www.ohs.orq.uk/conferences/2010.php

Autumn 2009 ORAL HISTORY 75

This content downloaded from 109.146.79.55 on Wed, 05 Apr 2017 13:50:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms