A Guide: To be used to Identify the (Unfortunately) Numerous Rank and File Unions in Italy

To date, in Italy there are the following rank and file unions, which we list below in decreasing size order: USB, CUB, SI CoBas, Confederation CoBas, SLAI CoBas. As can be seen from this brief note, the picture is characterized by fragmentation in many organizations more or less at war with each other. This is a very negative factor for the rebirth of the class union and an expression of the political opportunism of the various leaderships.

1) USB (Unione Sindacale di Base): born in May 2010 from the union between RdB (Rappresentanze Sindacali di Base, Base Trade Union Representatives), SdL (Sindacato dei Lavoratori, Workers’ Union) and a minority share of the CUB (see below). It is the largest among the rank and file unions and has about 40 thousand members. The majority of the leadership stems from that of the RdB, which was born in the late seventies and early eighties in some categories of the civil service (Social security workers, Firefighters). From 1992, when the CUB was born, RdB had federated with them, forming the RdB-CUB. But in reality the union has never been substantial. The birth of USB in 2010 on the one hand represented a step forward towards the organizational unity of basic unionism, on the other a step backwards, as it led to an organizational break with the CUB and to the beginning of a war between the latter’s leadership and that of the newborn USB. RdB was a trade union established by a large majority on public sector workers. USB in recent years has also started to develop in the private sector, forming organizational units in some engineering factories, thanks to the influx of a group of militants and officials from the left opposition of the largest regime union in Italy, i.e., the CGIL (Italian General Labor Confederation).

In the private sector, USB had also undergone a good growth among workers in commerce, but last February an important part of the union structure in this sector, about half of the national one, with its top manager, abandoned USB, accusing the summits of authoritarianism, and merged into the CoBas Confederation. This is not the first episode of breaking up within USB, since there were those of February 2016 that led to the birth of SGB and two minor splits during the first congress in 2010, which caused the formation of micro local trade union organizations: ADL in Varese and SIAL CoBas in Milan. The growth and strengthening of this rank and file union, therefore, does not seem easy, obvious and straightforward.

2) CUB (Base Unitary Confederation): born in 1992 following the expulsion in Lombardy – the most industrialized region of Italy – of a left wing of the second trade union of the country, the CISL (Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions). On the wave of a working-class struggle that took place in 1992-93, the CUB spread nationwide in various sectors of private business. From the very beginning, it has established a federative pact with RdB, with the intention of constituting a single and larger rank and file union, present in both the private and public sectors but, as mentioned above, things have gone differently. Over time, instead of developing, this union suffered a slow decline until, in 2010, due to the maneuver of the management group of RdB that led to the emergence of USB, the CUB suffered a severe blow, losing some pieces in favor of USB, which, judging by the mobilizations of recent years, seems to have further aggravated the decline. Its presence in the engineering factories, once scattered in many places, now appears confined to a few islands (eg Electrolux of Solaro, ILVA of Taranto). In any case we do not have reliable numbers about the membership of this union. In 2016 it signed a federative pact with SGB, a small trade union formed with a February 2016 USB spin-off, which mainly concerned the territorial union structures of Emilia, Lombardy and Venice.

3) SI CoBas (Intercategory Union of Base Committees): born in 2010 from a SLAI CoBas split, starting from two groups of members in logistics warehouses in the Milan area, it had considerable development in this sector. Today it has approximately 10 thousand members. It is developed above all in Lombardy and in Emilia, with minor groups in Turin, Alessandria, Genoa, Rome, Naples. It acts in concert with the ADB CoBas, which operates in the same sector in Venetia and Romagna. It is the only rank and file union to date able to deploy strikes that actually affect the productive activity of the sector in which it is installed at national level. The participation of its members in the demonstrations is very numerous, as in the last two cases, in Rome on 23 February and in Milan on 27 October last year, on the occasion of the general strike promoted by a part of the base syndicalism, succeeding in bringing to the streets a number of workers whom the other basic union organizations put together are hardly able to reach. So, despite having a number of members certainly less than that of USB, the ratio between this and that of the participants in the mobilizations is the best among the basic unions. The limit of this union lies in being confined, with very few exceptions, in the logistics sector and in organizing immigrant workers to a large majority. The second between these two factors, which certainly is also a merit, however, contributes with the first to shore up a sort of ghettoization of the union organization compared to the rest of the working class in Italy. It does not help to overcome this isolation – as we write in the introduction published here to the two leaflets distributed in Rome on 23 and 24 February – the idea of the national leadership to characterize the union in a party sense, based on the assumption that this should play a function of “substitution” in the face of the absence – in its view – of the communist revolutionary party.

4) CoBas Confederation: born in the mid-80s mainly among school workers and secondly in health care, developing then as a leopard scattered fur in other categories (eg post office, transport, urban hygiene), also in the private sector. Also this union has experienced a slow decline over time. In November last year the loss of a major part of the health federation was lost. In February, however, it received the influx of that part of the trade union structure of the commerce sector that abandoned the USB.

5) SLAI CoBas: born starting from 1992 in some big factories like the Alfa Romeo of Arese (Milan), Pomigliano (Naples) and Termoli, and SEVEL of Atessa. It also had a good organizational structure among the tram drivers of Milan, and was the protagonist in the great national mobilization of December 2002-January 2003, with wildcat strikes (outside the limits of the law). The latter group was expelled from the SLAI CoBas together with the majority of the Varese territorial structure, and formed the CoBas Workers Association, which then joined the CUB in 2010. The shutting down of the Arese factory, the bosses’ repression in that of Pomigliano, and finally the 2010 split that led to the formation of the SI Cobas, marked a drastic decline in this union.

There are also other small or very small organizations: in addition to the aforementioned ADL Cobas, SGB, ADL Varese, SIAL CoBas, there are also UNICoBas (mainly established among teachers), USI AIT (anarchist), USI (Roman splitting of USI AIT), the SOL CoBas (split from SI CoBas).