note the idolatry of the machinery and of the physique of the worker;
this is the age of production, the engineer, the political conscious worker.
note the big investment in equipment and imagine how costly it would be to change
the line--which could require shutting it down and retooling it.
huge assembly lines, concentrations of thousands of workers for war-time production.
Since the market for cars is limited, the middle class being small and workers making
too little wages, small-cylinder cars don't go on the market until the 1950s.
Workers massing to go into work on time in the 1960s
Workers with so much in common in work more readily unionized to gain higher
wages and political voice
Big strike against the Fiat Mirafiori works during the "red years" 1969. By the late
1960s, workers were organized in strong unions, with Communist party backing,
as you can see from the slogans and flags.
The Fiat Company opens to the USSR by setting up a plant at Togliattigrad in 1970
Fiat sets up plants elsewhere too, here in Brazil, to take advantage of emerging
markets and low costs locally.
As the labor movement at Fiat weakens, the Communist party, hear represented by
its leader, Enrico Berlinguer, tries to give it support in the occasion of negotiations
over contracts.
The head of the General Confederation of Labor, Lama, also speaks to the workers
during the 35 day strike of 1980, which the workers lose. This strike marks the end
the strong labor movement at Fiat.
1986: Robots making cars instead of men
Note how much has been robotized and mechanized, and the change in the workers'
garb, as if they were clerks instead of line workers.
note how scientific production has become, how skilled the workforce, the distance
from the heroic line worker of the 1920s.
Originally Benetton produced in and around Treviso, the northeastern Italian town
where the family firm was founded. As its market grew, and the firm employed more
and more specialized communications technologies, it was able to outsource
production to small workshops in Italy and more and more peripheral areas.
The factory disappeared--and so did the workers.
Post-Fordist products put a big emphasis on life style. Notice how the image,
produced by the company, emphasizes the chic life-style of management, to which
the very chic-looking factory is a mere backdrop. There is no sweat anywhere. And
no labor. And no locality. Just image.
Company publicity highlights the communication functions of the industry.
Headquarters holds the information-communication-design functions of the business.
Labor occurs elsewhere. Communication enables the company to have precise figures
directly from the stores and, in turn, to communicate directly to manufacturing sites.
The stock passes directly from the sites to the stores. That way, style changes can
occur rapidly and there is no need to hold costly inventory.
Benetton emphasizes Italian design and manufacturing traditions. This emphasis is
important to giving meaning to products that are always changing, infinitely adaptive
to a global public, and lacking the concreteness that consumer durables like
automobiles seemed to have.
Between management and distribution, the phase of production seems to have
disappeared. The biggest investment of post-fordist capitalism is in distribution
systems. These use relatively small work forces. And the images would make it
seem that they virtually operate themselves.
Corriere della Sera, October 18 1998 Child labour for Benetton in Turkey
Eight o' clock in the morning in the Kagithane neighbourhood, outskirts of Istanbul, on the
European side of the Bosporus. De streets are filled with mud and holes. The sky is a roof of
smog. We see the workers of the factories of Sanayi Mahallesi, an industry zone with textile
companies. The eyes of Ozcan Babat, 12 years old, are sleepy but his three older brothers drag him
with them to the entrance of the factory Bermuda: an ugly building with three stores, occupying
between 250 and 350 people, according to the season. Ozcan should be going to school; according to
the Turkish law and also to the international labour convention on the work of minors (which forbids the
work of children younger than 14). And according to his face. Instead, Ozcan enters the factory each
morning at 8. "Since a year I come to work here with my brothers. I work illegal, my brothers are hired
legally. They pay me 22 million Turkish lire. There is no social security whatsoever, no social benefits.
They pay me cash, once a week, a quarter of the total. I am happy. I don't complain. What I do? I saw
long trousers. Which brand? Benetton naturally. We all make garments for Benetton.. These days
Bermuda is working on the orders of Benetton for the spring of '99. Or better, there is a flow of orders
from Bogazici Hazir Giyim, the company that manages the orders for Benetton in Turkey, garment with
the brand name Benetton, made with cloth that is send in directly from Italy. These concepts are miles
away from the daily reality of a child like Mehmet Kocac. For 132.000 (Italian) lire a month, Mehmet is
a piece in the long chain, from subcontractor to subcontractor, that produces garment that is sold at a
much higher price than their wage. In store 012 of Benetton, specialised in clothes for children, in he
centre of the same Istanbul where Mehmet works, the cost of a sweater for the winter is 38 million
Turkish lire. To buy this, Mehmet and the other 25 to 30 children younger than 14 working at Bermuda,
have to work one and a half month. Like Mehmet and Ozcan, Ercan Yildirim is a child worker from
Turkish Kurdistan. He is 13 years old and during a work break, after lunch, he starts playing in one of
the buildings of Bermuda. If a stranger approaches him and asks him if he works for Bermuda, a
gatekeeper comes out of the building who threatens: "leave these premises, we have orders not to let
anybody near." This Benetton production-chain consists of the mother company in Italy and Bogazici
that places the orders in Turkey at Bermuda and several other large factories. In addition to this
Bogazici has 24 to 30 small workshops producing for it. At the company Gorkem Spor Giyim, the
owner Yusuf Eskenzai shows a Benetton-hat that one of his employees just finished. And a sweater for
children. Eskenzai explains to the journalist who acts as a garment industrialist: "We produce for
Benetton. Five thousand, ten thousand, how many they want, what they want. We cut fabrics by hand
and sew the clothes here or at other workshops working for me." A part of the garments go to Italy. A
part stays in Turkey or goes to the Turkish speaking parts of the ex-Soviet Union. On all labels it says:
"Made in Italy".
Once more, publicity shots emphasize the ready-to-wear, just-in-time nature of
post-fordist production. There is no assembly line here. The garments are, as if,
ready-made, the colors, the styles, the cut, at the command of the consumer.
Benetton stocks what management, drawing on local store reports, thinks the traffic
will bear. Benetton in this chic place caters to the tourist trade in downtown Paris.
It's stock would be subtly different--in color, cut of jeans, etc--from the Benetton on
Madison Avenue or the Benetton which opened, say, in the former German
Democratic Republic town of Eisenach in 1992.
United Colors of Benetton moved right into eastern Europe after the Wall fell. It
outsourced production to places like Albania and it set up shops, practically
indistinguishable from those in western European centers, on the main streets of
the capital cities, then in smaller and smaller centers. Post-fordist consumption
segments production, seeming to tailor it to local tastes. At the same time, it uses
networks to offer the same product across national and international lines, catering
to a wide middle class--in the case of Benetton. Who knows where the products for
this store were manufactured in Slovakia, or in Albania, or in Istanbul?
Benetton publicity is definitely iconoclastic. It embraces globalization. Posters by
Oliviero Toscani want to make a statement to the effect that United Colors of Benetton
are for the whole world, that they unify, across race, in spite of disease,
notwithstanding religion. Publicity is socially conscious, as if the product itself were
socially conscious, pro-environment, a contribution to the unity of humankind.
Benetton, in sum, unites the world in life style, while recognizing difference. The
problem of unequal standards of living seems to dissolve.
SMILE, TOSCANI’S HERE!