Two General Strikes in Italy

On February 23 and 24 were two days of mobilization of rank-and-file trade unionism in Italy.

On the 23rd, school workers, health workers and firefighters went on strike in the public sector, together with logistics workers in the private sector.

The strike by school workers was called by all the rank-and-file unions – the CoBas Confederation, CUB, UNICoBas, USB and SGB. Left-wing opposition groups in the FLC CGIL union also joined in. A joint national event also took place on Friday 23rd in Rome, where our comrades distributed both of the flyers published below.

As written in the flyer for the strike, this unity of action of rank-and-file and combative trade unionism was very positive, but should have been implemented much earlier, before rather than after the signing of the national contract (February 9).

Even this unity of action was not done in the public health sector. The strike was proclaimed by the Confederation CoBas Public Employment, by the CUB, by USB and by SI CoBas, but not by the USI AIT, by the SGB, nor by the CoBas Health and Research Confederation, which in November 2016 had broken its association with the CoBas Confederation. Nor was a single national demonstration was organized. The USB has organized an event on its own under the Ministry of Health, to which did not participate all the provincial structures of the union in the sector, such as that of Genoa, and it resulted in a harmless presence.

As to firefighters the only rank-and-file union that participated, the USB (apart from the CUB, which organizes only a few so-called casual, i.e. temporary workers), made the right decision not to sign the economic part of the renewal contract a few days earlier. It declared a strike but did not organize any demonstration.

Certainly, the best choice would have been to organize a unitary rank-and-file demonstration for workers of all three public sector categories on strike, to unite weak and fragmented forces in the workplace and in the sector, but the energies and, above all, the will in this sense was lacking.

In the logistics sector workers were mobilized by SI CoBas and the small ADL CoBas. This strike was also proclaimed within the dispute for the renewal of the national contract, which expired on December 31, 2015. It should be noted in this regard that the national contract 2013-15, signed by CGIL, CISL and UIL, in addition to being harmful (which has been generally the case in recent decades) it is very often not even applied in the warehouses, with the complicity of the same regime unions who signed it. In many cases SI CoBas has therefore found itself having to fight to enforce a contract which it does not agree with and has not signed. Where it has developed a considerable strength – as in the Bartolini, GLS, TNT, and SDA groups – it has managed to sign national agreements which represent an improvement with respect to the national contract. It should also be pointed out that these agreements must then be applied in all warehouses, which is not taken for granted, but always depends on the balance of forces.

At the end of October, the official, national trade unions (CGIL, CISL and UIL) declared two days of national strikes to support the dispute and then proclaimed two more for December.

Unlike what was done in other situations, for example during the strike on November 24 at the Amazon warehouse in Castel S. Giovanni (Piacenza), SI CoBas has boycotted these strikes and proclaimed four days of abstention from work, divided by groups of companies, from 4 to 7 November.

We don’t believe that this choice should be condemned, given the degree of corruption and complicity with the bosses by CGIL, CISL and UIL in this category of workers, as well as the fact that it demonstrated that the strength achieved by SI CoBas is comparable if not greater than that of the regime unions. This rank-and-file union is therefore able to organize strikes that are not minority strikes, and actually affect production.

A similar tactic is, on the other hand, wrong in those categories where rank-and-file unionism is still in the minority. In these cases, the trade union orientation of our party is to support the strikes promoted by the official regime trade unions, while advocating the correct classist demands, and not to organize separate strikes, as these would be minorities that do no harm to the bosses.

Significantly, on the night of November 3 CGIL, CISL and UIL signed the contract renewal, revoking the strike days scheduled for December.

The four days of strike organized by SI CoBas seem to have gone well, even better than similar, and in any case successful, national days of struggle proclaimed in past years to support the struggle for the renewal of the contract within the labor category. However, although there is some evidence that the bosses, regime unions and bourgeois political regime are worried, the forces deployed seem insufficient to overturn the system of close collaboration between companies and trade unions, which once again have been able to have it their way.

Filt CGIL, Fit CISL and UIL Trasporti formally signed the new Contract “on conditions” on the night of November 3 and decided to repeal it after holding workers’ assemblies by February 1. In reality very few assemblies have been held and it was the usual empty formalism to give the seal of democracy to a harmful contract.

SI CoBas would therefore have had almost three months, from November 7 to January 31, to try to stop the renewal of the contract by organizing a new strike. Instead it waited until February 23, when the conditions had been set aside almost a month earlier.

This delay is partly explained by the organization, in Rome on the day following the strike (Saturday 24 February) of a national demonstration with a more political rather than purely trade union character, not surprisingly close to the day of the elections, on March 4.

The political character of the demonstration was also apparent in the official communique to announce it: “For an anti-capitalist front” – different, and opposed, to the practical address of our party that is “For a united trade union front”.

The political position that characterized the demonstration was in the abstentionist direction, although this was formulated in equivocal terms, as evidenced by the final sentence of the communiqué: “Conquests and rights are achieved through struggle; without this the vote can only bring illusions and disappointments”. This implies that, when the working class returns to struggle, it will be useful to participate in the elections – another illusion!

As written in one of the two leaflets, both distributed on February 23 and 24, it is legitimate for the leadership of a trade union to express its political affiliation. It is not legitimate – being instead harmful to the union – to use the union, its organizational structures, the energies of militants, its members and financial resources – in support of a party or a front of groups and parties, when the class has not matured to the same positions and attitude; this would imply a serious division, both in the rank and file of the union itself and in the labor movement as a whole.

The event was a success, with excellent participation, a sign of the trust of the workers in this union, and therefore of its good union work, and of the organizational effort deployed. But this does not affect the validity of what we say.

The union’s characterization in the party sense does not favor its development and the strengthening of the labor movement. A trade union does not become a “class” union because it is the mouthpiece and supporter of revolutionary communism, but because it knows how to translate these political positions into the appropriate practical approach to the trade union struggle.

If today the workers registered with SI CoBas show trust in this union, over time this characterization in the party sense will inevitably generate divisions, discomfort, bad moods. It then determines a problem in the relationship with the rest of the class, whose membership can be more easily inhibited by the regime union organizations, which have a good motive to paint the SI CoBas as an organization maneuvered by political groups for their own purposes. In short, it is an action intended, as long as you persevere with it, to shore up the isolation of the union.

The initiative was also taken by the management of the SI CoBas to respond to the decision of the leadership of the USB to give support to the election cartel “Potere al Popolo” (Power to the people), into which the so-called Eurostop Social Platform has merged.

The event was convened by mixing trade union slogans with political ones to make the mobilization more attractive for members, who would be less encouraged to mobilize behind purely political slogans.

The USB behaved similarly: they proclaimed a general strike on November 10 but focused all their efforts on the national political demonstration of the Eurostop alliance on the following day in Rome. They wanted the workers to believe that this political demonstration was the strike demonstration. Instead they were led to march behind political, reactionary slogans such as the exit of Italy from the Euro and from NATO.

These methods outline a dangerous war between party-unions, which damage the working class, and the trade union movement, hindering its emancipation from regime unionism.