General Strike in ITALY

From http://www.ft-ci.org/

A big call by rank and file unions
General Strike in ITALY
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
By comrades of the Communist Collective of Via Efeso

Berlusconi’s government is getting ready to unload the crisis, at its beginning, brutally onto the workers and the popular classes. Like Prodi, his center-left predecessor, he is seeking to isolate wage earners more and more, to pad the effects of a hidden crisis that had become obvious some time ago. In addition to racist measures against immigrants, an educational reform that continues the privatizing and pro-boss measures imposed under Prodi and a brutal campaign against state workers, with cutbacks and increasingly precarious employment, Confindustria, the big Italian employers’ association, is trying to impose a reform of the national work agreements. However, autumn in Italy has begun to get hot. Groups in the working class and among young people, that now count 15 million of their fellow Italians below the poverty line, are beginning to act. In September, the heroic resistance of the Alitalia workers showed that something could be changing in the workers’ state of mind. In turn, the “second generation Italians” from the suburbs (children and grandchildren of immigrants, born in Italy) showed up massively, with clashes and antiracist demonstrations. Protests among teachers, secondary-school and university students are growing, with marches by parents and teachers, and occupations of schools and universities in big Italian cities. The latest news is that Berlusconi is threatening to use cops to put an end to student protests and the seizures of universities and schools. This new social climate forced groups of the union bureaucracy to relocate. Another symptom of the intensity of the current wave of struggles: Veltroni’s Democratic Party, having wavered about keeping its October 25 national demonstration, in the name of “a sense of national responsibility” because of the economic crisis, nevertheless is now calling for a mobilization, and, while we were closing this note, it requested the withdrawal of the Gelmini reform, in order not to be cut off from the mobilizations. On the other hand, this new climate filled the demonstrations, that had been planned some time ago, with a different content, like the October 11 demonstration, called by Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) and the Italian Communists, that served as a means of expression for tens of thousands of young people and workers fed up with the government’s policy, and the massive October 17 general strike, called by rank and file unions, that we report on below.

The national demonstration that went across Rome showed that the general strike called by rank and file unions (RdB-CUB, Cobas and SdL [1]) had a big success. Support for the strike was higher than anticipated. In spite of the rain that fell all morning on the capital, an impressive demonstration (500,000 people according to the organizers, 350,000 according to La Repubblica) marched for more than four hours between Repubblica and the Piazza San Giovanni.

Other anti-government mobilizations were organized in the length and breadth of the country. In Milan, a demonstration called by the CUB and the SlaiCobas [2] joined with two other demonstrations, one, by the teachers, and the other, by the students, and then they marched towards the Rectorate Building. After having thrown eggs and firecrackers, the students knocked down the barriers and, in front of the main entrance, they left a banner on which was written, "We are blocking the decree [of the reform of the educational system], occupation! The school is opposed to Gelmini [the Minister of Education]! The revolt is in the street and has hardly begun!" Strikes and demonstrations also paralyzed traffic in Naples and Palermo, while students in Florence, Pisa and Siena mobilized, occupying the universities.

... On October 17, a clear message was sent to Berlusconi. The strike set forth that his policy of wage cuts, attacking civil servants, and attacks on education, displeases many people, not least, the most dynamic groups of workers and students. The strike made it clear that the government will not be able to get its policy approved automatically, at least, not without having to "pay some price." What is more, the more Berlusconi has to pay for the attacks he is unleashing, if the government is weakened, the better the conditions will be for the working class of the peninsula to struggle and reorganize its ranks.

Students, teachers, state employees, transportation workers, workers with uncertain employment: all united

Who were the ones who came out to the street and for what reasons? The most visible sector was the one the Italian press calls "the people of the schools," teachers, hit three times: by the widespread offensive against the working class (reform of the national labor agreements, reductions in wages and in retirements), by cuts in public services, and by the attack on education (the Gelmini reform anticipated a reduction in the number of workers, privatization, in the final instance, of the universities, through their transformation into "foundations," the implementation of a more authoritarian and even repressive educational model, etc.).

They were also public sector workers.... Berlusconi is trying to deepen an orientation carried out during the last few years, by both center-left governments and those of the center-right, that consists of continuing with the cuts in public adminstration, both from the point of view of wages and jobs.... In the different marches, the considerable number of transportation workers was observed. Traffic in several cities was disrupted with the strike, as attested, for example, by the 33% rate of participation in the strike in Rome.

There were likewise workers with uncertain employment, especially from the public sector....

In short, the mobilization went beyond all those sectors influenced by rank and file trade unionism. There lies perhaps the greatest innovation and potential of the mobilization and of the current phase. Among the demonstrators, there were many unorganized workers or others who have the membership card, especially of the main union organization in Italy, the CGIL.

What perspectives after the October 17 strike?

The fact is that the aims defended by the organizers of the October 17 strike (no to the cuts in public services, no to precarious work, for wage raises and the sliding scale, against bank and stock market speculation, for a social wage) have a reformist-redistributionist matrix (leftist Keynesianism). It is also a fact that those who participate in the strike and the real movement impose a content on it. From this point of view, considering the reduction of the spaces for redistribution, the workers that struck and went out to the street could become more "opposed to the system" and "incompatible" with respect to the demands proposed by the leaders of the rank and file unions.

Before the October 17 strike, the bureaucratic leaderships of the unions in the Confederation had announced (without giving any date or specifying the form of the actions of force) a series of mobilizations in the educational sector and the civil service. At the same time, however, they declared themselves prepared to continue a dialogue with the government, as shown by the public statements of Bonnani, leader of the CSIL, and of Angeletti, main leader of the UIL.

The call for measures of force by the bureaucracy of the Confederation had as its aim, weakening the strike by the rank and file unions. It is also a symptom of a change in the state of mind in some mobilized groups. Taking into account, for example, the assemblies of state workers in which we participated: all the workers attacked by the government, few of them unionized, who have not yet broken with the bourgeois political leaderships of the center-left, nor with the bureaucratic leaderships of the unions, are today demanding a real, effective and united struggle, although timidly and without having the ability to impose it.

Considering the stage we are going through, the October 17 strike cannot remain as a mere work stoppage, whose main objective consists in organizationally strengthening the space that the rank and file unions have at their disposal. If the leaders of the rank and file unions pose the problem of building a real and effective counteroffensive against the government, if they know how to take up again the banner of the different struggles that are crossing the peninsula now, then the October 17 strike could become the first stage of a movement that would serve to build a broader, more permanent and combative front of struggle.

With the October 17 strike, the workers and students that joined the measure of force more massively than anticipated, marked a milestone. Will the union and political forces that consider themselves militant and class-conscious respond to their demands? In the national post-strike communiqué, the Cobas leadership sets forth that "the exciting demonstration in Rome sends a united message of increased awareness to continue stronger than ever in defending social rights and workers' rights for everyone: forward!" Continuing in this direction would mean carrying out a consistent and united struggle (based on workers' assemblies, with openness to current struggles, up to and including when they are led by the bureaucracy of the Confederation, etc.) to broaden the current front of struggle and transform it into a more general movement against the government and the bosses.

[Notes]

[1] According to the abbreviations in Italian, Representatives of the Base-United Confederation of the Base (RdB-CUB), Confederation of the Committees of the Base (Cobas), Inter-category Union of Workers (SdL), the three main rank and file union organizations in Italy. Although small, they are characterized by more radical positions than those of the historical union confederations, CGIL, CISL, and UIL.

[2] The Intercategory Union of Self-organized Workers-Committees of the Base (SlaiCobas, according to its Italian abbreviations), of lesser size, compared to the other rank and file unions, generally defends more militant and class-conscious positions.