SEIZURE OF FACTORIES

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 294, 6 September 1920, Page 5

SEIZURE OF FACTORIES

0 MOVEMENT SPREADING IN ITALY ' CONCILIATION PROPOSALS (By Telegra.ph--Press Association- Copyright London, September 2. The "Daily Chronicle's" Milan correspondent states that tho factory-seizing movement is spreading throughout Italy. Thousands of (corkers stormed the gates and scaled tho walls of the F.I.A.T. works in Turin, which employ 10,000 people, and also occupied the machinery shops of twenty other well-known automobile firms in Northern ltuly. Eor-1 tunatelv the majority of the companies had taken the precaution to transfer their monov and valuables secretly at -, night from their own strong-rooms to tho banks. Hod flags wero hoisted. Industrial works wore seized in Homo and Naples, chiefly those engaged in making tramears, electrical apparatus, and armaments. "Workmen's committees are exercising stern -discipline, and have even constituted prisons inside tho captured factories, in order to punish recalcitrants. In some places the workmen are forging lances in order to moot tho military if an attempt is made to dislodgo them.

The Government is averso to intervening, but Signer Labriola, Minister of Labour, after consultation with the Catholic labour organisations, has proposed a formula of conciliation, by which tho workers will take over the direct management of the factories through the formation of societies of skilled managers and co-operative companies among tho meii, which will pay the owners a rent based on the cost of tho plant.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.