IN ITALY’S industrial heartland, immigrant textile workers have launched a wave of coordinated strikes that have forced dozens of factories to concede basic labour rights, demanding an end to 14-hour shifts and winning the right to a 40-hour work week.
In just 14 weeks, 68 out of 70 targeted factories in Prato — Europe’s largest textile hub — have agreed to implement ‘8×5’: eight-hour days, five days a week.
The movement, organised by the independent base union SUDD Cobas, marks the culmination of seven years of worker-led organising in one of Italy’s most exploitative sectors.
Prato is home to more than 7,000 textile and garment businesses, employing around 43,000 people, many of them migrants from South and East Asia.
These companies are often small, specialising in single stages of fashion production such as sewing, dyeing, twisting yarn, or garment logistics.
Despite their size, they generate nearly 2 billion euros in annual exports under the ‘Made in Italy’ fashion label.
Yet behind the branding lies a system marked by brutal conditions: 14-hour shifts, unsafe equipment, union busting, and, in many cases, workers forced to live inside their workplaces.
In 2013, seven Chinese workers were killed in a fire at one such factory, Teresa Moda, where they had been sleeping in makeshift dormitories on-site.
The current upsurge, now referred to as the ‘8×5 movement’, has its roots in the 2021 Texprint strike, where workers at a fabric printing company sustained a nine-month strike to demand a 40-hour week.
That action introduced the use of round-the-clock picket lines — or presidios — which became a defining tactic of SUDD Cobas.
Presidios, consisting of tents, chairs, kitchens and sleeping areas, allow even minority strikes to exert pressure by physically blocking the circulation of goods.
‘Finished products can’t leave, so employers start to lose clients,’ explained Sarah Caudiero, a coordinator of SUDD Cobas, in an interview with Morganne Blais-McPherson of Labour Notes.
‘This forces bosses to come to the table — even when only a handful of workers are on strike.’
SUDD Cobas was formed in May 2024 following a split from the union Si Cobas. As a comitato di base (base committee), it operates independently of Italy’s three major labour confederations.
In Prato, SUDD Cobas has often clashed with employers and elected officials from the Democratic Party, focusing its efforts on defending migrant workers routinely subjected to extreme exploitation.
The recent strike wave began on 6 April 2025 with a new tactic: a ‘relay’ of indefinite strikes. Each workplace strike had its own presidio.
As one strike ended, another began elsewhere.
‘Bosses wouldn’t know who was next,’ Caudiero said.
‘We ran 15 strikes in one month — many ended after just a single day.’
The success of the relay strikes created an unexpected problem: demand. ‘Workers began asking us to help them organise strikes at their own workplaces.
‘But with high season ending in July, we didn’t have time to keep using the relay model,’ Caudiero said.
The union adapted, launching the ‘Strike Days’ model at the end of May.
Rather than staggering actions, SUDD Cobas began coordinating simultaneous, open-ended strikes across multiple factories.
At their peak, ten pickets ran concurrently.
Each was staffed by at least one Italian-speaking point-person — someone trained in workers’ rights and experienced in handling police or negotiations with management.
On the first Sunday of Strike Days, the union staged a Macroblocco Day, named after Prato’s industrial zone ‘Macrolotto’ but replacing ‘lotto’ with blocco — the Italian word for blockade.
Workers launched ten pickets in the heart of Macrolotto and then marched together through the zone.
The march began at Teresa Moda, site of the 2013 fatal fire, and attracted workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and India, as well as students and activists from Pisa and Lucca.
‘Workers came out of their factories to join us,’ Caudiero said.
‘One man we didn’t know just left his workplace mid-shift and joined the protest. By that evening, only three picket lines were still active. All the others had already won.’
The momentum spread rapidly.
The next morning, a worker from a neighbouring company approached one of the pickets, asking for help to strike.
Union members were called out with megaphones, encouraging others to walk out. Eight workers from four different companies joined them on the spot.
Crucially, this success was built on solidarity.
‘Workers who won in April came back to the streets to support the new picket lines,’ Caudiero explained.
‘This made simultaneous strikes possible. It wasn’t just about numbers — it was about coordination and commitment.’
SUDD Cobas divided the city into eight zones to manage picket support.
Zone meetings were held to organise night shifts, water supplies, and food delivery — crucial during the sweltering summer heat.
‘People who hadn’t been active before got involved,’ Caudiero said.
‘They could see clearly that this kind of mass support was essential.’
The current round of strike days is still under way.
Since late July, the union has assisted with 18 new strikes and is finalising its fifteenth contract from this latest phase.
Workers from another 30 factories have approached SUDD Cobas for help launching actions.
Many of these are small workshops — employing 8 to 20 people in jobs like sewing or ironing — but their owners are not minor players.
‘They often own multiple businesses,’ Caudiero said. ‘We organise them as if they’re departments of one big factory.’
This shift to organising the smallest, most precarious workplaces was deliberate. ‘For six years, we focused on larger textile firms — places with 50 to 100 workers.
‘But we’d left out the smaller shops, which often have the worst conditions,’ Caudiero said.
‘Now we treat workers from different small companies as if they’re colleagues, part of one struggle.’
‘Strike Days proved that these places, long believed impossible to unionise, can be organised — through solidarity, coordination, and the will to fight,’ she said.
