Parmalat Workers Shafted By Capitalist Greed

WORKERS AT the main production base in Italy of
"Europe’s Enron" have no sympathy for those they call the
"magnificent eight" locked up in Milan’s notorious San Vittore
prison. They are the founder and Chief Executive, Calisto Tanzi, and five
directors of the Italian food giant Parmalat and two directors of their
accounting firm, Grant Thornton who have brought the company to bankruptcy and
the verge of collapse.

Clare Doyle

As the hunt widens to uncover the network of fraud behind
the disappearance of $8 billion into a "black hole", the jobs of more
than 36,000 workers in 139 workplaces worldwide are under threat. The missing
billions are equivalent to nearly 1% of Italy’s GDP!

The company has grown in 40 years from a small family-run
delicatessen in the northern city of Parma to the eighth-largest company in
Italy and a ‘flagship’ of Italian capitalism. It now operates in 30 countries
packaging and selling milk, water, fruit juice, biscuits and other foods and
has made rapid inroads into the Latin American and East European markets.

Parma is also at the centre of Italy’s ‘red belt’ with a
long history of militant workers’ struggle. A shop steward of the union
federation Cisl, Angelo Peracchi, explained after a shop-floor council meeting
on New Year’s Eve, that the workforce is determined to fight. "There are
whole families working here… many fear they have lost their life savings
because the company and the local banks encouraged them to invest in Parmalat
bonds… The workforce here is very heavily unionised".

The workers and their organisations should campaign around
the demand for immediate nationalisation (without compensation) of Parmalat and
a programme of industrial action on an international as well as a local plane.

The workers of Italy are still involved in numerous
strikes, and a generalised offensive against the government is needed. The
economy is in trouble even without the Parmalat crisis and wages are not
keeping pace with inflation. Six million Italian pay packets are below the
minimum subsistence level.

The budget deficit is Û12 billion worse than last year and
only kept within the 3% of GDP deficit range by the sale of state assets and
‘one-off’ measures which cannot be repeated. The government of Silvio
Berlusconi itself is threatening to collapse as the coalition partners fall
out. The Parmalat crisis could be the last straw.

His government has taken Parmalat into administration and
appointed Enrico Bondi, "a turn-around expert", to replace the
imprisoned executives. It has organised a cash injection of Û50 million and
given a six month deadline for recovery.

As a member of Lotta per il socialismo (the Socialist
Party’s counterpart in Italy) in nearby Modena commented, it is not just a
question of regulation and control, as the economics minister, Tremonti,
claims. "Instead it is capitalism itself which is to blame because it is a
system based on the laws of profit and not the needs of people like the
Parmalat workers, the striking underpaid transport workers, the Alitalia
hostesses fighting for a better deal in life."

The Securities and Exchange Commission in New York calls
the Parmalat affair, "One of the largest and most brazen corporate
financial frauds in history."

There have been other dramatic collapses recently elsewhere
in Europe (Vivendi in France and Ahold in the Netherlands). In Italy, Fiat has
come close to collapse. Parmalat is eleven times smaller than Enron, but, as
scores of investigators continue their work and the net widens, La Repubblica
(5/1/04) comments that "The work developing on the Parma-Milan-New York
axis risks touching the very heart of the international finance system".

For the workers of Parmalat and the associated industries,
in Italy and worldwide, the only solution is a struggle to oust the bosses from
their ‘enterprises’ and from society as a whole.