Modena, 6 April 2019 – Class Solidarity

[Text of the ICP’s leaflet at a 1,200 worker protest in Modena, Italy in defense of rank and file unions.]

The trial of the National Coordinator of the SI Cobas is part of an overall attack by the bourgeois regime [on rank and file unions]. This attack is being carried out against a  10 year long struggle in the logistics industry, which the SI Cobas union has been able to organize and represent.

Through hard fights – made up of real strikes,  made without notice or predefined length, with pickets blocking goods and fighting scabs – thousands of workers have obtained important victories, wage and regulatory improvements. The SI Cobas has gone against the tide compared to other industries which have suffered defeats and retreats for years, seeing their living and working conditions worsen.

The bosses’ aim is to prevent the extension of this struggle beyond the logistics sector. An enlargement of the working class’ front could lead the workers to rise from the dead end where the regime trade unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL, UGL) have led them. The rank and file unions could break the hegemony of these organizations, who defend the national economy – the interests of the bosses and the State. These regime unions have repeatedly shown that they constitute the first line of repressive action against the most combative workers. They are the ones who sabotage the strikes, signing downward agreements with the companies to try to stop the fight, thus offering justification to the police to attack and clear the pickets.

Of course, repression against workers in struggle is carried out primarily by the bosses in the workplace. Disciplinary reprimands, suspensions, transfers and other measures that often prelude dismissal, but when these means and the dirty game of concerted unionism are not enough, the bourgeois regime intervenes in the first person, that is, the State, which now at every strike ranks in front of warehouses, factories, construction sites, carabinieri and policemen in order of war.

Last December the Parliament passed a law – the so‑called Security Decree – aimed at immigrants, who represent a significant part of the working class. But the decree also attacked pickets and demonstions, in short, the freedom to strike. The decree is therefore against the whole working class, both immigrant and native. Of course, this  law is a further exacerbation of repressive actions against the entire working class and its struggles. These repressions carried out by the employers and the various governments with continuity over time.

In January, courts condemned delegates, leaders and some supporters of SI Cobas for having participated in a picket at DHL Settala (Milan) in 2015. And now there is the trial of Aldo Milani [National Coordinator of SI Cobas]. The legislative, executive and judicial powers are in a common front in the defence of the bourgeois regime.

Against this line‑up of advisaries, the proletariat can and must only count on its forces. Only by the extension of the workers’ struggle and strengthening of class unionism, its currents and its organizations, can generate a solidarity which constitutes a far‑sighted, not ephemeral defence. That solidarity is a needed prerequisite for the future offensive against capitalism and its political regime.

Solidarity coming from „honest democrats”, from cultural, legal and academic „personalities” must not be allowed to deceive the workers about the nature of democracy. A democracy which in the test of economic crisis and with the resumption of the proletarian struggle, will reveal its true face: the dictatorship of capital over the working class.

We work for the unity of action by all the organizations and currents of combative unionism. We need to defeat the trade union opportunism which dominates in the base unions. Because their fragmentation and their methods of struggle by the majority of the current leaders, will not be able to defeat the regime’s trade unions.