Trade Union Activity in Italy

(Report from General Meeting 144, September 2022)

Currently, the party’s trade union activity in Italy can be divided into four areas: the drafting of notes, articles and leaflets; direct intervention in demonstrations and strikes; activity inside trade unions, which currently is limited to the rank and file union USB; and activity within the Coordinamento Lavoratori Autoconvocati (CLA).

For nearly 10 years – since the January 2013 issue – the party has returned to include in the Italian newspaper a fixed page of “action and theoretical party address” titled “For the Class Union”. (Per il Sindacato di Classe)

In the June issue, accompanying the leaflet we circulated at the demonstrations for the May 20 general strike against the war, called by all the rank and file unions, we published a commentary about its progress and preparation.

We were able to follow the preparation of the strike closely through the Coordinamento Lavoratori Autoconvocati (CLA), which was invited to participate in the preparatory organizational meetings, as well as all the bodies – including non-class bodies – that supported its promotion, since the first national assembly in Milan on April 9, which we attended and at which we spoke, both by disseminating party leaflets and by a speech on behalf of the CLA.

While we saw there were limitations in the preparation of the strike and the low participation in it, our judgment of this action was not negative, since we emphasized:

– The value in the attempt to organize working class action against imperialist war, which is under way in Ukraine, in the face of the bellicose uproar deployed by the bourgeois regimes in Italy and the rest of Europe, and the immobility of the regime unions aimed at preventing any such movement by the workers; – to the fact that, even amidst hesitation and wavering, all the rank and file unions eventually joined the strike.

This judgment, even when placed in context with the previous united general strike of October 11, 2021, distinguishes us, among workers’ groups and parties acting in the labor movement. Most of the latter – including the leaderships of rank and file unions – either expressed a negative judgment or minimized the importance of the actions taken by rank and file unionism against the war.

These differences from our judgments are due to two factors, united by, firstly, giving too much importance to the numerical weakness of the present demonstrations and, secondly, giving too little importance to the characteristics that make them likely to have a wider future development.

The first of these two factors is the scant regard in which the autonomous action of the working class alone is held, the result of the opportunistic political approach which considers a popular, interclass movement to be of greater value provided – at best – that the working class is “at the center”.

According to this approach, for example with regard to opposition to the imperialist war, a large part of these opportunist workers’ groups place much more value on large pacifist demonstrations of an interclass nature than on strikes by a part (albeit a minority one) of the working class.

We, on the other hand, know that only the mobilization of the working class is capable of preventing or stopping the imperialist war, and that this is what the bourgeois regime really fears.

Thus a first attempt at mobilization on the trade union, i.e. class, level of the workers against the imperialist war is of great importance, in the certain prospect of the maturing of inter-imperialist contrasts and the consequent pressure of the bourgeois regime on the working class to bend it to exploitation and militarism.

The second element-which seems to us to underlie the different judgment from that expressed by our party on the merits of the strike against the imperialist war and the previous one in October 2021-is the lack of importance given to the unified character of these mobilizations, that is, to the fact that all the rank and file trade unions joined them.

This, we believe, inasmuch as this unitary character does not appear, in the immediate term, to have been a condition that led to substantial advances in the numerical participation of workers in the strikes thus called.

As we have explained repeatedly in our articles and leaflets, the united action of the bodies of militant unionism – the rank and file unions as well as the class oppositions in the CGIL – is not in itself a magical solution to the current state of passivity of the working class.

This state of passivity is the result of a series of complex factors concerning the century-long cycle of counterrevolution that began in the mid-1920s.

The united action of the militant trade unions, pursued consistently and organically, that is, at all levels of trade union action – corporate, territorial, categorical, national and confederal – is the subjective condition such as to foster the most rapid return of workers to struggle when objective conditions become favorable in this regard.

Conversely, the persistence of the opportunistic conducts of the leaderships of the rank and file unions, which divide the workers’ struggle action, is an eminent factor of restraint, which helps maintain the regime unions’ control over the workers, of maintaining their state of passivity.

Moreover, the direction of the unity of action of militant trade unionism, agitated at the rank and file of its bodies, is useful in sustaining and organizing the struggle against the trade union leaderships and their opportunism; expecting that such persistent and organic unity of action, leading to a permanent united class trade union front, can only be had against and to the detriment of them.

In the past two years we have witnessed a partial change of course on the part of the leaderships of the rank and file unions, especially those of USB and Si COBAS. It first showed itself with the nation-wide unified strike in logistics held June 18, 2021. It should be recalled that in this very category there was a few years ago the hardest clash between the two basic unions. Then the united course led to the October 11 general strike, a mobilization still far from being a true general strike but the most successful compared to similar actions in previous years. Then there was the general strike against the war on May 20. Finally, as we will report later, the united demonstration in Piacenza on July 23 in response to the arrests of USB and SI COBAS leaders.

This unitary course has taken place, and is likely to continue, amidst limitations, hesitations, backtracking: one step forward and two steps back.

* * *

Again in the June issue of the Italian newspaper we published a commentary on a national assembly convened in Florence on May 15 by the former GKN Factory Collective, in which we participated as CLA representatives.

This assembly allowed us, through this commentary, to reiterate some important points of our trade union direction, with regard to what the true characteristics of a class movement are and to the relationship between the economic struggle and the political struggle of the working class.

Here we add only one consideration that ties in with the above. The Factory Collective of the former GKN managed to aggregate around its struggle against the closure of the plant a movement of a certain size, such that it deployed several demonstrations, well attended, the most successful with over ten thousand participants.

The May 15 assembly was also successful, with over three hundred in attendance. These numbers have – rightly – attracted the attention of all rank and file unionism, its militants, and even the CLA.

However, in spite of the participatory mobilizations, to the extent that the leaders of the former GKN Factory Collective attached more importance to uniting their struggle with interclass movements – such as the student or environmental movements – than to uniting with other workers’ struggles and, even more importantly, than to unifying the action of militant unionism, the prospects of the small movement to which they gave birth are shorter-range, compared to those of the united actions of basic unionism, albeit for now less striking in terms of participation.

The work, the effort, on the part of our party, in the union sphere, and through the CLA, has been to explain how the former GKN Factory Collective’s ability to mobilize originates in the union work carried out in the past years, up to the announced closure of the factory by the ownership, and how the only future perspective is outside the factory; in the construction not of an interclass movement but of a working class one, working for the union of workers’ struggles and of militant unionism.

The commitments made by the ex GKN Collective for demonstrations planned in the months ahead, all of which are interclassist in character, and the absence of any initiative aimed at directing and strengthening the movement of class-based union struggle, confirm what had already been observed in the evolution of the characteristics of the demonstrations and demands from the beginnings of the dispute from July 2021 to the present.

Contributing to the dissipation of these energies of workers’ struggle in the quagmire of interclassism, once again to the detriment of the necessary work of rebuilding class union strength, were the opportunist political approach of the Collective’s workers’ leaders and their membership in the CGIL.

These two factors led them, on the one hand, to belittle the value of autonomous action by the working class and to seek instead the building of a people’s movement, and on the other hand, not to act as a force for promoting the unity of action of militant trade unionism, so as not to jeopardize their place within the CGIL.

To really and thoroughly pursue the unity of action of conflictual unionism in fact, can only lead the areas of opposition within CGIL to break with the internal discipline of that union, which would reveal the impossibility of a class orientation within the CGIL and the need to organize outside and against it.

* * *

Confirming what has been said so far, about the vacillations and reluctance of the leaderships of the rank and file unions to persevere and improve unitary action among the various trade union organizations, after the May 20 anti-war strike, the unitary course – contrary to what we had hoped for and called for – appears to have stalled, if even, perhaps, taken steps backward.

There were other meetings between the union leaderships but this time reserved for them, which the CLA therefore could not attend.

To date there is serious confusion about the general initiatives that will be promoted in the fall months.

There is a call for a SI COBAS-, USB- and CUB-lead general strike registered with the Guarantee Commission for Oct. 21; the notice sent on July 15 has not been promoted among member workers of these unions.

As if this were not enough, last Sunday – Sept. 18 – the SI COBAS held a national assembly in Bologna, titled “Let’s relaunch proletarian opposition to the bosses’ plans of misery, militarism and policies of social butchery”, from which it launched a general strike for Dec. 2, which evidently implies the withdrawal of adherence to the Oct. 21 mobilization.

Some leaders seem to be waiting for the national general elections on Sept. 25 before they start propagandizing and organizing any mobilizations. Or, which is even worse, they are too busy competing in the elections, as in the case of the USB leadership.

This confusion and inconclusiveness on the part of the leadership groups in the rank and file unions evidently only does harm to the work of reconstructing the class union movement, at a time when the issue of high living costs is posed with increasing gravity, and which should see rank and file unionism take an initiative to defend workers from it.

This, all the more so given that, in view of a likely victory of the right-wing bourgeois parties, the CGIL will return, as it has always done, to give itself to some activism through mobilizations. A first sign of this is the FIOM national demonstration in Rome called for October 8th, convened without even waiting for the passage of the elections. At this demonstration our comrades will speak.

* * *

In between the ineptitude of the opportunist leaderships of the rank and file unions manifested in recent weeks and the May 20 anti-war strike, in July there was the affair of the arrest in Piacenza of 8 local and national leaders of SI COBAS and USB.

The arrest took place as part of an investigation by the Piacenza prosecutor’s office. This is the third attempt to judicially attack the class union movement in logistics: twice by the Piacenza prosecutor’s office, once by that of Modena.

In the first two cases, all charges were dropped along the trial process. This third attempt, for the first time involves not only SI COBAS but also USB.

Even in this third attempt, the most serious and central charge of the investigation, that of “criminal conspiracy”, came down less than two months after its initiation.

Reading the excerpts of the investigation compiled by the prosecution, indeed it seems blatant how it does not stand up judicially, and is characterized as a mere attack with anti-union aims, to curb strikes in the logistics sector and destroy the rank and file unions that organize them.

The reaction to the arrests was quite positive in terms of participation in the local demonstrations and the July 23 national demonstration in Piacenza, considering that they took place in the middle of the summer vacations period.

The most positive aspect was the united reaction of SI COBAS and USB: in Piacenza the workers of the two unions marched not only in the same procession but also mixed, that is, not divided into two sections.

We intervened by distributing a leaflet that was promptly translated into four languages.

The CLA also intervened with a leaflet titled “Unite with struggle and organization what the State wants to divide and intimidate with repression”.

* * *

The Coordinamento Lavoratori Autoconvocati, in addition to the national demonstration in Piacenza on July 23, intervened in the summer months with two leaflets.

The first was on August 2, at Piaggio in Pontedera, where on July 27 there was a strike compactly joined by workers, with a procession inside the factory, following a serious injury to a female worker.

In this factory there was traditionally a robust minority of delegates from the opposition area in CGIL, as metalworkers members of FIOM (CGIL’s metal workers union).

Several years ago, these delegates had been suspended from FIOM CGIL but had not left that regime union, and had finally been readmitted to it.

Six years ago, a minority of these delegates left FIOM to join the USB. Between the delegates from the opposition within CGIL who remained in that union and those who switched to USB there was from the beginning a climate of discord.

A few months ago, delegates from the opposition groups in CGIL who had remained in that regime union also decided to leave it, and switched to a small rank and file union called SIAL COBAS. So now at Piaggio in Pontedera there are two rank and file unions.

In the nearby former Continental factory, now called Vitesco, a few years ago some of the FIOM delegates, also members of the opposition area in CGIL, had left the regime union to join USB.

However, these delegates came into a bitter clash with the local USB leadership, including USB delegates at Piaggio.

In this clash, the USB delegates at Vitesco sought support within the union, and thus came into contact with us, who are known to be in opposition to the positions of the national leadership.

In the relationship that was established, the bad conduct of the local USB leadership in the Vitesco and Piaggio factories emerged.

The USB delegates from Vitesco, along with a member of the USB provincial executive, finally decided to leave that rank and file union and also joined SIAL COBAS.

Nevertheless, the relationship with us was maintained and these delegates came closer to the CLA.

The second leafleting carried out by the CLA was on September 9 at a postal center in Ponsacco (Pisa) where a worker had died a few days earlier.

Finally, on September 12, a document was published, drafted by one of our comrades and only modified to a small extent, entitled “Against the rising cost of living a united action of militant unionism is necessary for the construction of a general movement for strong wage increases”.

This document takes up and reiterates the indication given by our party, expressed in the leaflet distributed in Genoa on Sept. 1 at a national assembly of the USB against the war, titled “The first step in stopping imperialist war is to strike and refuse to pay its costs”.

This party leaflet was distributed in Genoa at the subway station in a proletarian neighborhood of the city over several days.

* * *

The party leaflet and the CLA leaflet were distributed at an assembly in Rome on Saturday, Sept. 17, called the “Proletarian Anti-Capitalist Assembly”. Two of our comrades and two union militants from the CLA were present at it.

This assembly is intended to be a body with a permanent character and is what remains of the Anti-Capitalist Action Pact that was created three years ago by the SI COBAS leadership, finding mainly support outside the union in the Stalinist political group Communist Youth Front.

This operation of the SI COBAS leadership was strongly criticized by us, because it tended to create a hybrid body between party and union, even before the political positions expressed.

We had also expressed the easy prediction of a premature death, of such a Pact of Action, which invariably occurred, at the behest of the two forces that had promoted it, SI COBAS leadership and FGC.

Some smaller forces that had joined it, more correct in conduct but equally confused and opportunistic, didn’t want to abandon the project, and with much smaller forces renamed it the “Proletarian Anti-Capitalist Assembly”.

We can then characterize this proposal as having the same flaws as the Action Pact promoted by the SI COBAS leadership, with the only difference being that it declares more clearly that it wants to constitute a union-party body.

One of our comrades intervened by reiterating, in a very well articulated speech, the need to keep the two spheres, union and party, distinct.

* * *

The day after the Roman assembly at which we spoke, a national assembly of SI COBAS was held in Bologna. Neither our comrades nor any CLA militants were able to attend.

Compared to similar assemblies organized by SI COBAS in past years, this one was not convened behind the screen of the so-called “Assembly of Combative Workers”.

The latter was nothing more than an instrument of the Action Pact to try to give it a broader base of support. It had to forcibly remain subordinate to the directives of the Covenant of Action and, where this was not possible, as in Rome, it was made to die by its promoters, i.e., the leaders of the SI COBAS and the FGC.

The fact that the assembly this year was convened not in the name of this body but of the SI COBAS is confirmation of the death of both the Covenant of Action and the Assembly of Combative Workers, but above all – what only matters to us – of the short-sightedness and opportunism of the leadership of this union.

The Bologna assembly saw on the one hand less participation than previous editions in years past, and on the other a heightened characterization in a party sense, with a more evident presence of the front of political groups that directs SI COBAS, called Revolutionary Internationalist Tendency.

This is yet another confirmation of the persistence of these leaders in their opportunism, in the error of wanting to overcome the difficulties of the class struggle with the illusory shortcut of building a half-union, half-party organism.