A Report on Rank and File Movements in Italy

Dear M.

In response to your very reasonable comment that there needs to be more focus on the ’difficulties of organisational steps on the shop floor’, a comrade sent me the following commentary and update which hopefully you will find addresses that point to a certain extent. We hope you find it useful.

The SI Cobas was born as a split from another Rank & File (R&F) union – the SLAI Cobas – in 2010. The SLAI Cobas had already organised some workers in a couple of warehouses but not much more. The SI Cobas has been able to build up a workers movement in the logistics sector, spreading to a good number of warehouses in some regions of Italy: mainly in Lombardia and Emilia Romagna (North Italy); then in Turin; more weakly in Lazio (centre Italy) and Campania (South Italy). In another region in the North East of Italy, the Veneto (of which the regional capital is Venice) we have a similar R&F union, the ADL Cobas, based in Padova.

We can consider this union ’a sister’ of SI Cobas since they co-ordinate their strikes, demonstrations and national agreements. But the ADL Cobas arose many years earlier, in 1992, and it seems less combative then the SI Cobas. In spite of having been around since 1992, it isn’t achieving the same success as the SI Cobas, only spreading across the Veneto and a bit into Romagna (the eastern part of Emilia Romagna) and to a warehouse in Parma (Emilia).

The SI Cobas R&F union managed to achieve what no one other R&F union had been able to achieve before (with the partial exception of COMU in the railways): it started to organize strikes in a substantial number of companies and managed to organize a first general strike in March 2013 and then another four, really affecting the sector.

On 19th February of this year the SI Cobas achieved a national agreement with three big international corporations (TNT, GLS, Bartolini).

This is a result no other R&F union has ever managed to achieve before: to obtain a national agreement on its own, without the regime unions; and, what is more, to obtain a signed agreement that improves workers’ conditions in the midst of an economic crisis in which agreements in all other sectors have agreed to worse conditions.

How has it been possible to achieve this result?

The first reason is the workers themselves. These workers, mainly immigrants (although there are also some Italians), want to fight, are ready to go out on strike and hold out, to picket, and fight the police.

They belong to that part of the Italian working class whose conditions are worst.

So the SI Cobas achieved a success because it organise workers’ energies effectively; an already existing workers’ strength and energy.

Our direct experience in Turin in the CAAT (agroindustrial market) confirms this view: the SI Cobas’ militant just went up to the entrance of CAAT and gave flyers to the workers.

Many workers stopped to speak with these militants because they were fed up with their awful working conditions. A spontaneous meeting took place.

Then a meeting in the SI Cobas headquarters was organised with some of these workers and a strike was decided upon. It was May 2014. After this successful strike (involving clashes with the police) a group of about 40/50 workers of CAAT began to attend meetings at the SI Cobas HQ on a regular basis and affiliated to this union.

But why did SI Cobas achieve this result and not the other Italian R&F unions? That is the question!

Also after the SI Cobas began to spread in the logistics sector (in 2010), showing that it was possible to organize a working class fight there, the other R&F unions somehow weren’t able to keep up with it, to do the same.

We think the reason is that the SI Cobas has been ready to organize really determined strikes, with picket lines, as opposed to what the other R&F unions have been doing, which is saying they want to organise workers struggles but being too frightened to actual do it.

The strikes organized by the SI Cobas really get results. In some warehouses workers improved their really awful conditions. These workers began to talk about these achievements with their friends. And thus SI Cobas began to spread. Workers go to SI Cobas and explain their problems. The SI Cobas sends a letter to the company, but usually the company doesn’t reply to a union it doesn’t recognize. So the SI Cobas organises a strike with a picket line. The SI Cobas attempts to organise the picket line not just with the workers of the particular company but with workers of other companies, to build class unity, to lend more strength to the picket line.

But there is not always a happy ending! Sometimes the strike is won and the SI Cobas is recognised by the company and a satisfactory agreement is signed.

But more often than not the companies, once the agreement is signed, fire the workers organised in the SI Cobas.

For this reason SI Cobas has organised a number of fights against these layoffs. Some times it has won. Sometimes not.

To support these fights the SI Cobas has created a fund so it can give money to the workers who have been fired, but this has created financial problems.

Another problem is about the nature of the national agreement achieved this February. It is a success as far as the economic part is concerned: workers improve their conditions with it. But the agreement also includes a section that limits the freedom to strike. That, clearly, is a compromise. And we aren’t necessarily against certain compromises. But not all compromises are acceptable.

We need to know more about the situation.

Linked to these two problems – the financial one and the issue of compromises – is the question of the way workers’ pay their monthly subscription to the union. This is the well known question of the DELEGA.

The SI Cobas is certainly different from other R&F unions in terms of its readiness to take strike action, etc – as we have tried to explain – but is not so different as regards ’the delega’: it too wants to utilize this facility, the payment of the monthly quota through the company.

So there are two problems:
     1) the companies know who is affiliated to the SI Cobas and therefore know who to fire; as they have done on many occasions;
     2) there are some companies that won’t pay organisation the collection of union dues through the Delega system..

On the 1st, 2nd and 3rd May there will be the first national congress of SI Cobas.