Outside and Against the Existing Trade Unions

Although written in 1979, the title of this article still remains our watchword in Italy. Should this also be the case in Great Britain? The official unions in Great Britain are, after all, also more or less integrated into the State, and perhaps bound even more tightly to it through their links with the Labour Party. But if the end result will have to be the same in both countries – a rebuilding of a union of the working class, which fights on behalf of its members and puts the need to confront capitalism at the heart of its strategy – it would be premature and over prescriptive of us to say that the building of a class union in Great Britain will necessarily follow exactly the same path as in Italy: the history of their trade union movements is, after all, in many respects different.

In Great Britain the class union may, somehow or other, emerge from the old Union Jack trade unions (although it is difficult to see how); or maybe the smaller and more militant of the trade unions will take the lead and form some kind of new federation, perhaps in conjunction with a mass disaffiliation from the Labour Party, and a clear declaration of independence regarding the other pro-capitalist parties. But the most likely scenario, we believe, is that the predominant components of the future class union in Great Britain will be composed, as seems to be on the way to happening in Italy, of breakaway unions, who have been forced to form ‘outside and against the existing trade unions’ due to the sheer impossibility of expressing working class resistance within them. Indeed, breakaway unions have already figured in the history of the working class in Britain, namely the Blue Stevedores’ Union to name but one, and it is likely that such unions will eventually form the core of the class union over here as well.

The reader will note the article refers to the ‘delega’ – the direct deduction of union subscriptions via pay packets. Why do we view this as marking a watershed in the integration of the Italian trade unions into the State? It is because it marks a definitive separation between the trade unions and their members. Over the years trade union members, especially in the smaller workplaces, have tended to have less and less actual contact with their union; when it finally reached the stage of not even having their subs collected by the union, but having them collected by their firm’s HR department instead, a line really had been crossed. No wonder that the trade union is now mostly perceived as an anonymous head office, which periodically sends out magazines packed with pro-Labour Party and pro-democracy propaganda, and masses of adverts, and that’s about it. And perhaps the fact that the British version of the ‘delega’ has been portrayed by the leaders of the establishment unions over here as a victory, is evidence that the watershed, the point of no return, really has also been reached in Great Britain…

In any case, it is in the spirit of international solidarity that our party presents this article to the working class of Great Britain; as a record, and as an interpretation, from a communist class perspective, of the experience, and class battles, of the vanguard of the Italian working class.

June 2012.

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Our current watchword regarding the trade unions – outside and against the regime’s trade unions – isn’t an eleventh hour discovery, or an adjustment made to fit in with what the workers are thinking. Rather it arises out of a consistent reading of the facts on the basis of our long tradition. In fact, ‘ideas’ and ‘ideals’ form no part of our doctrinal, programmatic and tactical baggage: Marxism jettisoned them ages ago. Our doctrine is merely ’the description of a real process unfolding before our eyes’. Our programme, our tactics represent the mapping out of the route the working class must take to liberate itself, and humanity as a whole, from exploitation and tyranny.

Therefore it is in the realm of facts, in the ongoing, real historical process that we expect to find the answers to our current problems and our theses confirmed, and not through intellectual lucubration. And this is precisely because our doctrine is a scientific one and not a collection of ideas. Indeed if even only one of our theorems were to be contradicted by reality, by the facts, Marxism would no longer be a science but an ideology. However, given we are militants and not coldly objective students, that won’t, of course, stop us from fighting to bring down capitalism.

As far as the party is concerned, the questions that need to be asked about the trade unions in the post Second World War period are these: how do we characterise today’s unions? Can they still be won back to a classist orientation?

We have no trouble answering the first question: the big trade union confederations in Italy, the CGIL, CISL and the UIL, are cut from the same cloth as Mussolini’s fascist corporations, that is, they are firmly linked to national solidarity and the State.

But to answer the second question we have to take into account a number of different factors:
     1) After the split in 1948, the General Confederation of Italian Workers (CGIL) ‘took over’ the glorious red tradition of the Chambers of Labour, which the most combative part of the Italian proletariat believed in.
     2) Membership of the unions was still direct and non-obligatory and the delega method was yet to be introduced.
     3) The CGIL was forced, under pressure from the workers, to take in hand powerful strikes; in other words the workers, during the phase of reconstruction and economic expansion, were able to utilise the CGIL’s structures in their defensive struggles against the bosses.
     4) During all of these strikes, even in the most difficult phases, the workers were never forced to organise outside the CGIL.
     5) The process was irreversible that would eventually lead to the open incorporation of the present trade unions into the state machinery, and yet it wasn’t complete, and our duty was to oppose it in the same way the most combative workers were ‘instinctively’ opposing it already.
     6) The most combative part of the Italian proletariat, the sound element within the working class, was still militating in the CGIL and leading a genuine struggle against the bosses.

On the basis of these considerations we couldn’t rule out the possibility that one day, during a new wave of workers’ struggles, it might be possible to roll back the CGIL’s policy, alter its structure and win it back (all or in part) to a class political line. Thus we used to talk about ’reconquista a legnate’–beating it back into shape. If that didn’t happen, we said back then, new classist organisations would be needed, which were free – that is not tied to the State and the parties supporting it – clearly anti-capitalist, and open to all proletarians.

To that end our militants fought a battle inside the CGIL. Hence our slogans, ’For the Red CGIL against Tricolore Unification’ and ’Against the Delega’, and so on. We used to work both inside and outside the CGIL, working always with both possibilities in mind: either the union would be beaten back into shape, or new organisations would arise. Our general watchword, however, would include both possibilities, putting forward the need for the rebuilding of class trade unions.

Today, 30 years later, we have no such reservations and state quite categorically that the CGIL can not be won back. This means that the rebirth of class trade unions can only occur if new workers organisations arise, with a corresponding emptying of the present tricolore unions.

This isn’t a change of line but a reaffirmation of our old positions. The real process, the facts not our opinions, have led us to the conclusion that the road that leads to working within the CGIL is now barred for ever. The only road that remains open is the road that leads to new proletarian organisations. Today, therefore, this is the road we are duty-bound to recommend to workers, for there is no other. So, rebirth of the proletarian organisations outside and against today’s regime trade unions: what was it that led us to this conclusion?

1) The CGIL’s organisational structure has become increasingly impenetrable and resistant to working class positions. The direct deduction of union dues via the employer, the delega, is now a practice that has spread to all categories. After the EUR agreement, the trade unions confederations have now formally accepted the postulates of the capitalist economy; the Chambers of Labour have been abolished and replaced with inter-classist area councils (consigli di zona); the trade union confederations are now firmly committed to increasing production and reducing the costs of labour; self-regulation (autoregolamentazione) has meant that strikes have been reduced to the level of mere demonstrations; union members are asked to formally submit to the State.

2) Since 1975 the worst paid workers – hospital workers, railway workers, flight attendants, school workers – have taken part in various struggles, including some major strikes with no time limits set on them – real strikes in other words. In all these episodes the trade union – across its various structures, including those based in the factories – has consistently sabotaged them, denounced them, appealed to the State to repress them, and been openly involved in blacklegging. These all-out strikes, in which there has been massive participation, have made not the tiniest dent in the trade union structure, not even in its factory organisations. Over the same period there have been massive strikes on the international scene too: in Poland, in Egypt, in Tunisia. In every case the workers have been forced to break ranks with the trade union leadership and disobey their directives.

3) The one episode inside the trade union structures has been the ’Lirico’ demonstration, which produced nothing in terms of struggle but was monopolised by the trade union left. And where were the Lirico organisers at the time of the unanimously supported hospital workers strike? They, too, were contributing to the tightening of the cordon sanitaire which would isolate that workers’ struggle.

4) Numerous other limited episodes as well, including partial and very minor struggles, have shown it is now an incontestable fact that only outside and against these unions can proletarians defend their living and working conditions.

5) Co-ordinations and committees arising outside the union structures have now been an effective reality for years and are tending to crop up in every sector: now they are even appearing at the very centre of the working class, amongst the metal workers.

These considerations have for us the value of a sampling, a survey. It is not about opinions or ideas but about taking stock of reality. If in the 1950s we could say that the best part of the proletariat was organised inside the CGIL and wanted (and were able) to use it to fight their battles, today we have to say that the tendency is for the most combative and conscious part of the proletariat to abandon the present trade unions, and bring new organisations into existence. It will be a long, hard and difficult process but that is the direction in which things are already moving.

It is a trend that still only involves small minorities, true, but that doesn’t lessen the relevance of our analysis in the slightest. Those small minorities that are getting organised ‘outside and against’ are right, and the millions of workers who still think the official unions will defend them are wrong. Tomorrow those small minorities will become millions, and there will be a mass desertion of the patriotic tricolore trade unions. Our tried and tested method of reading the facts convinces us of all this; and we are duty-bound to communicate it to the workers.

Certainly, we shouldn’t raise the issue of the stance to be taken towards the trade unions in the middle of a strike which may also be supported by workers, either voluntarily or because they have to, who have no definite ideas about it, or aren’t even interested in the issue.

But when we do pose the practical problem of how to define the main features of a workers’ organisation, which acts and has to continue to act beyond a single episode of struggle or single demand-which must become permanent, because there is no other way forward-then we have the historic duty of being absolutely categorical about it: outside and against the regime’s unions; for the rebirth of the class organisation!