The ICP’s February 23rd Leaflet

Today, the Rank and File (“Base”) unions have called for a national strike in four industries: one industry in the private sector; Logistics (SI Cobas and ADL Cobas unions), and three in the State sector; Education, Health and Firefighters (USB union).

Today’s mobilization of workers in Education – and, to an extent, Public Health workers – is heartening. That all the base unions (Confederation Cobas, CUB, USB, SGB, Unicobas, SI Cobas, USI-AIT) have found unity in action by organizing a strike on a single date, surpasses the conflicts between their leaderships last fall which hindered a general strike. In Education this unity encouraged the left opposition in the CGIL (Italy’s largest union federation) to join in, further strengthening today’s strike.

Another positive element is that the USB, the only rank and file union to have access to the national negotiations for Firefighters, has not signed onto the inter-union National Contract renewal (supported by the large regime unions).

All four strikes were called to deal with contract renewal negotiations in each industry, despite the fact that for three out of four – Logistics, Education  and Firefighters – the regime unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL) have already signed contracts which effectively agreed to decreases in the purchasing power of wages, and which will be in place for years.

For the government employees – who have suffered for 8 years a contract block – the CGIL was not ashamed to say it had ”regained the right to contract”, wanting us to believe that the very State-employer was not already going to make such renewals, of course on its own terms.

In regards to the regime union’s contract in the Logistics industry, it should be emphasized that these unions – in line with what has been done since the late seventies, at least  – have accepted further limitations on the freedom to strike, by including part of the processes of the industry within the activities subjected to the anti-strike laws 146/1990 and 83/2000. These laws are already affecting the entire public sector, and have the evident intention of stopping the growing strength of the labor movement in this sector, which has grown thanks to the SICobas union.

If this strike cannot reopen contract negotiations, it will show to the workers in the industries involved that there are unions who won’t  give up the fight and who reject these crappy contract renewals.

That Base unions in four different industries have called this strike is a small step towards the unity of action of the working class and the formation of an United Front of Class Labor Unions, two necessary conditions for workers gaining the strength to defend themselves.

But there is still much to do. There will be many errors and even more enemies to overcome and defeat.

The Rank and File unions in the Public Sector should have organized to strike before the final stage of national contracts negotiations. This was not possible because of the divisions between the leaderships of the various organizations which are only bypassed when the gravity of the situation makes it inevitable. But these divisions resurface later, causing defeats and preventing construction of a movement that develops over time and has the strength to combat the combined efforts of the employers and regime trade unions.

Only in Education was there a complete unity of action, with the organization of both a joint strike and a united national demonstration. In Healthcare, a joint demonstration wasn’t organized and there were some defections from the strike by the Cobas Confederation and USI-AIT.

Obviously, strikes shouldn’t be limited to State employees but should also include the increasing numbers of employees of private institutions in these sectors. Such organization should push for equal working conditions between the public and private sectors.

Finally, labor unions endorsing or joining political or electoral united fronts – even when they pretend to be anti-capitalist – is a deterrent on the movement and moves it back. Such alignments  should not be seen as a progress towards unity of action of workers and radical unionism, which needs to be based in the necessary construction of a single labor union front of the class. The leaders of a union can join a party and express their preference for a given party vs other parties. But we cannot condone the use of the union, its energy and its structures to support that party. Such political actions open divisions within the union, with members who do not agree to those politics, and it also raises problems with workers outside of the union, who easily see it as a tool of a particular party and not the general defense of the class. The union then takes a road opposite to that of the united front of class unions: encouraging conflicts between hybrid unions/political parties. Such is the case in many of the Base unions.

The defensive struggle for the class’ work and living conditions is anti-capitalist and tends to be revolutionary in itself, especially because it develops unity of action. The authentic revolutionary communist party pursues this goal with a class-oriented trade union policy – which prefigures a single trade union front of the entire class – and denounces the usual political opportunism, made of united fronts between parties and political groupings and their damaging vice of using the workers’ movement and its trade union organizations at their service – thus damaging them.