INDUSTRIAL TURMOIL.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1920, Page 6

INDUSTRIAL TURMOIL.

ITALIAN FACTORIES SEIZED. By Telojraph.—Press Assn —Copyright. London, Sept. 2. The Milan correspondent of the Daily Chronicle says that the factory-seizing movement is spreading throughout Italy. Thousands of workers stormed the gates and scaled the walls of the Fiat motor works at Turin, which employ 10,000 hands. They also oecripicd the machinery shops of twenty other well-known automobile firms in Northern Italy. Fortunately the majority of the companies have taken the precaution io transfer money and valuables secretly in the night from their own strongrooms to the banks. Bed flags were hoisted. The industrial works seized in Rome and Naples are chiefly engaged in making tram-cars, electrical apparatus and armaments. Workmen's: committees are exercising stern discipline, and Lave even constituted prisons inside the captured factories, in which the recalcitrants uva punished. In some places the workmen are forging lances in order to meet th.i military if an attempt is made to dislodge them. . The (V.vemment is adverse to intervening, but Signer Cabriola, Minister of Labor, after a consultation with the Catholic • labor organisations, proposed a formula of conciliation whereby the workers should take over the direct management, of the factories through the formation of. societies of skilled among the men, who will pay the owners rent based on the cost of the plant.