Iberica, the Spanish subsidiary of Massey Ferguson, have been involved in a bitter struggle with their multinational bossses. Starting as part of the struggle of the Barcelona engineering workers, the Motor Iberica strike has continued alone for over a month.
The Motor Iberica workers have had to face an intense campaign of harassment by their bosses, the police and right-wing thugs. The management have so far dismissed some 1,800 workers for striking, and have been advertising their jobs in the local papers. One workers' leader at the factory has had his house firebombed, and another his car set on fire.
But the Motor Iberica workers have drawn strength from their own unity and the solidarity of other workers. For several weeks workers at Perkins in Madrid (also part of Massey Ferguson) have been banning overtime in support, and factories throughout the Barcelona area have collected £10,000 for the Motor Iberica workers' 'resistSUS NES One of the most important sources of strength has been the solidarity of strikers' wives and families. From the first days of the strike wives started coming along to the mass assemblies. Eventually they were admitted to the assemblies (because, the men said, it was easier than being bombarded with questions when the meetings were over), and finally the women began to organise their own assemblies.
Last week some 300 women and their children began the occupation of a local church in order to highlight the strike (which has been totally boycotted by the Spanish press) and to appeal for support.
The following is part of an interview with a member of the Workers Commission at Motor Iberica who recently visited France with a delegation seeking solidarity from Massey Ferguson workers there. He is a militant of the Liga Communista, a Spanish sympathising organisation of the Fourth International. Motor Iberica OTT blies. here.
With the Italian elections on 20-21 June now only a few days away, press speculation on the 'threat' that the Italian Communist Party will enter the government has continued to mount. But what concerns the capitalists is not so much the Communist Party itself as the tremendous movement of struggles by the Italian working class which form the backdrop to the elections.
To understand the huge social struggles surrounding the Red Weekly 17 June 1976 elections, pondent in Italy of the French Trotskyist daily Rouge. The articles below, based on this interview, bring to life the bare election statistics. They show how the demand for a Communist PartySocialist Party government must be tied to developing the struggles and self-organisation of the working class. Red Weekly interviewed ANNA LIBERA - the corres-
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Motor Ibérica en lucha por la AMNISTIA LABORAL