SDA, Roma – The CGIL attack picketing strikers

Rome, June 8, 2015.

Against the background of the bitter struggle, from 22 April to 20 May, in which the organised porters in the SI Cobas clashed with SDA Express Courier (a company within the Italian Postal Group) and in particular in one of its three main national hubs (logistical centres), that of the Sala Bolognese, a strike would be organised on the night of the May the 18^th in their two Rome warehouses. In the larger one – which is the other national hub, along with the Carpiano hub in Milan – most of the porters are organised in the SI Cobas. In the smaller one, called Roma-1, the Si Cobas is instead in the minority.

The workers assembled In front of the warehouse at around four in the morning, At seven O’Clock, a large group of drivers, headed by the managers from the cooperatives and an SDA official, launched an attack on the picket line, armed with telescopic truncheons, crash helmets and other gear. The striking workers fought back and a harsh struggle ensued, with injuries on both sides, the most serious of which was to a striker, who risks losing an eye. The blacklegs managed to break the picket line, interposing themselves between it and the main gate. Nevertheless the strikers didn’t disperse and occupied the street. The forces of order then stepped in and after an hour or so forced the porters to fall back. The strike however continued to the end of the shift, forcing the drivers to load up their vehicles themselves.

It isn’t the first time that workers in a strike organised by the SI Cobas have found themselves facing attacks by gangs of blacklegs. It happened recently at the Rhiag di Siziano (Pavia) on 26 March. On that occasion the blacklegs, who were forced back, were led by some UGL delegates. But this time most of them were members of the CGIL, something which the FILT CGIL Lazio – the CGIL’s drivers’ union – has admitted and defended, and which the higher echelons of the union haven’t denied.

In response to this attack the SI Cobas organised a demonstration on 8 June at the SDA warehouse with a very successful procession which was mainly composed of workers. The following leaflet was distributed during this demonstration:
Defending and organizing the workers’ struggle

When workers are really fighting – with hard strikes, to the bitter end, with pickets to block goods and strike-breakers, joining together outside and above the level of the firm – it becomes immediately clear who their enemies are and also who are their false friends.

The workers in the cooperatives in the logistics sector, organized by SI Cobas, have learnt this by harsh experience: in five years of struggles they have faced retaliation by the employers and repression from their state with dismissals, beatings by the police, and by the bosses’ hired heavies, arrests, trials, and even expulsions orders on activists and leaders of the union. Nevertheless, the movement of workers’ struggle, thanks to the generous struggles of workers, has been constantly strengthened.

Workers have also had to fight against an even more insidious enemy: the regime unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL, UGL). These false unions are agents of the employers in the ranks of the working class: using every means to break up the fight, organizing strike-breaking, relying on false divisions among workers.

At Rhiag Siziano (Pavia), at the end of March, the tinpot leaders of the UGL led an attack on the picket of striking workers. At SDA in Rome the assailants were members instead of the FILT CGIL Lazio, which infamously defended and justified their shameful and cowardly action.

This shows which side these false trade unions are on. But it is also proof of their weakness, confronted with the workers movement in the logistics sector and its union, in a phase of rapid expansion.

The FILT CGIL accused the SI Cobas – in its struggle which began on April 22 and concluded, for the time being, on May 20 – of jeopardizing the jobs of SDA direct employees, and causing heavy losses for the company. Instead of taking advantage of the struggle of the porters to get other workers in the group to go on strike and achieve improvements for all, the CGIL counter-posed the interests of workers who were relatively better off to those of the lowest paid, who are the ones in struggle.

Not only that. SDA is owned by the Italian Post Office which is about to conduct an attack on its employees through a restructuring plan. A true working class trade union would try to get not only the drivers of the logistic cooperatives and direct employees of SDA to join with the porters’ struggle, but also the post office workers. The action of the SI Cobas has taken this road, giving support in Bologna to the regional postal strike proclaimed by the SLC-CGIL. In Rome, the response of the FILT CGIL has been to defend those of its members who have not hesitated to attack striking workers with batons.

The silence of the confederal CGIL, local and national, as of its territorial structures in the different categories, from which not a single voice of condemnation has been heard, confirms this union’s approval of the leaders of the FILT CGIL Lazio in defending the actions of their members’ pickets. This is yet another example, and a very serious one, which should serve to show those few, within the minority current of the CGIL, who gave their support to the strikers of the SDA in Rome, that the CGIL is irreversibly a regime union and that the class-based union will be reborn OUTSIDE and AGAINST the present union.

For the workers the way forward is that taken in recent years by the SI Cobas, which to its great credit has united in struggle workers regardless of differences of race, nation or religion, and promoted unity and solidarity among workers: the strike as the one way to defend oneself; unity of the struggles over and above the divisions of the shop, company and category! participation in strikes regardless of the union that calls them, even if by the CGIL, because the unity of the workers is the best weapon against the regime trade unionism! What is more, there must be an uncompromising rejection of any pact with employers which links the recognition of the union to the limitation of the freedom to strike; a pact which the Confederation Cobas, the ADL Cobas and, lastly, the USB, have already, criminally, made.

If today the SDA drivers accept the divisions instigated by the company and by the CGIL, tomorrow (as the GLS Rome drivers already have done) they will join the struggle of their class, organized in a real UNION OF THE CLASS, which organises proletarians above every company division, and above class, race, nationality, religion and political opinion.

This organization of struggle, to fulfil the immediate economic needs of the working class, is the best and necessary precondition for victory on the political level, for the overthrow of the capitalist system, which necessitates instead the revolutionary and internationalist Communist Party.