Italy – SI Cobas: Class Conflict in Modena

Below is the statement on the events surrounding the trumped up false accusation of accepting bribes, and arrest of the National Coordinator of SI Cobas, who had gone to Modena for negotiations at the Levoni/Alcar Uno meat-processing plant, where 55 workers had been fired after the settlement of various strikes by members of SI Cobas.

This arrest triggered off ten days of events: about two hundred workers and union militants had remained for three days in a demonstration outside Modena prison, until the freeing of the National Coordinator of SI Cobas. Meanwhile many strikes took place in various logistic warehouses in  Northern Italy, really hitting hard sectors of the national activity of this branch of industry. Finally, on Saturday 4th February, a national demonstration was organized in Modena, where this statement was distributed.

For some hours before the demonstration was due to take place, the police refused permission for this march to go through the Modena Centre. In that event the many hundreds of demonstrators, the  great majority workers, after being halted in a square for two hours during a down-pour of rain, with great enthusiasm marched off in another direction, until they reached Modena railway station, which they occupied for half an hour. After a brief clash with police the demonstrators left the rail station heading towards Modena Centre and partially marching through it.  

LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS
United and Organized in a Class Union – Conducted by an Authentic Revolutionary Communist Party – To Break with our Enemies and this Regime of Exploitation

The arrest of the National Coordinator of the SI Cobas raises some important considerations.

– The reaction of the workers members and activists in the SI Cobas – with strikes in dozens of companies, has actually hit the productive activity of the sector, was promptly initiated with the news of his arrest, organizing also a strong garrison around the Modena prison that lasted two days- confirms that this union has gained the confidence of the workers and how it is teaching them to act according to the methods and principles of action of class struggle. In fact, the workers defended their union with the practical act of the struggle and not with generic appeals to the institutions of the bourgeois state or the so-called «civil society», like both rank and file and Regime unions almost always do.

– The fact that the police apparatus of the Italian bourgeois state has attempted to hit the national leadership of the SI Cobas confirms that their union’s action is grounded in the class struggle. For that reason the SI Cobas worries the Italian capitalist class as already indicated by the hundreds of acts of repression occurring over the last six years: blacklists, layoffs, violent attacks on pickets, arrests, arrests and deportations.

– Almost all the so called free press, radio and television, has for years completely ignored the hard fought strikes organized by SI Cobas. Suddenly, when it comes to tarring the SI Cobas’ prestige, its strength, SI Cobas has appeared all over the news, even being called «the most combative union», as to demonstrate to workers there is no hope of rescue for the working class. There is no «free press» in capitalism only a bourgeois press and a proletarian press. Workers, with the union, must also yield their own press and not rely on those outside their own organizations of struggle.

– The Emilia Romagna CGIL and Parma FILT-CGIL unions have not missed an opportunity to spit poison against the SI Cobas and proven once again to be servants of the ruling class regime and against the working class.

– Two major rank and file trade union confederations, USB and CUB, have distinguished themselves by their silence. Not only have they refused to take any action but haven’t even expressed their solidarity with the SI Cobas. Worse, the national executive of the COBAS Confederation (another rank and file union) has asked the bourgeois press to avoid any association with it and the SI Cobas. Siding with SI Cobas only CUB Transportation, the Allca CUB, the SGB and CGIL minority group «The union is another thing». The miserable conduct of the leaderships of these base unions, which for years, with their sectarianism, have impeded the unity of workers action, confirms the need for workers and activists of these organizations to fight against their leadership, and impose a truly classist direction.

– This attack on SI Cobas was not the first and will not be the last. Capitalism sinks every day more into world economic crisis, and to slow its fall it must increase the exploitation of the working class by attacking the class’ living and working conditions. For the bourgeoisie to prevent the rebirth of one big Class Union, attacking even small organizations moving in that direction, is a vital issue, because workers need to fight today in their own defence and for the union’s quick and effective strengthening, if they do not want to be crushed by the weight of this dying mode of production.

– Capitalism’s march is to the only bourgeois solution of its economic crisis: World War III. The reconstruction of the class trade union is required to focus the forces of the proletariat, internationally, by creating the fundamental feeling of brotherhood and unity, putting a stop to the most sinister exploitation. But it is not enough to prevent this perspective. The only way to prevent the imperialist war is its transformation into a revolution: to turn the gun that the masters will place in the hands of workers to shoot their class brothers in other countries, to turn it against their own ruling class regime. This task can only be accomplished by a genuine revolutionary international communist party, which fights mercilessly against all the opportunist parties, the false communist parties, and knows how to win the confidence of the workers with its methods and its practical conduct in the field of trade union struggle.