Statement by ‘Lotte per la Pace e il Socialismo — Forum dei Comunisti’ - for the International Seminar of Bruxelles 2-4 May, 1998
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
The birth of basic trade-unions independent from the reformist trade-union centres, in Italy, it is an experience which started at the beginning of 1980s.
The trade-union representatives of the factories and firms' councils during the 1970’s had created some workers’ bodies (Basic Unitarian Committees, Workers Committees). The direction of such committees was represented by groups of the revolutionary left. During the same years it grows the debate on the ‘working autonomy’ that is to say how to organise the autonomy of the class interests against the need of the capital and the policy of co-operation with the owners carried out by the historic trade-union centres.
The First Basic and Independent Trade-Unions
In 1979 the first basic independent trade-union was created: Basic Trade-Union Representations (RdB). They are refused all trade-union rights (to meetings, entrance-fees) but the determination of the leaders group (composed by the same comrades who gave birth to our organisation) made it possible — after ten years of very heavy struggles, occupations of institutional seats, fights against police, denunciations and trials — the full recognition of the trade-union rights by the Government in 1990.
The RdB were born and grew during the first period especially among the workers of the public administration but beginning 1990 the RdB expand to the public services sector (transports and telecommunications) to the private sector and to some factories.
In 1990, some leaders and some representatives of the FIM-CISL (metallurgic trade-union of CISL) were expelled from CISL, created the FLMU (Federation of the United Metallurgic Workers) which was mostly represented in the factories of the North of Italy.
The First Unitarian Basic and Independent Confederation
In 1991, the RdB and the FLMU created unitarily the CUB (Basic Unitary Confederation) which put together an organisation rooted in the public administration and in the services with one more rooted in the factories.
The rise in quality and quantity of the RdB/CUB takes place beginning 1992 when the social agreement (the famous concertation) among the Government, the ownership and CGIL-CISL-UIL. At the same time, the Government starts the very economical austerity policy in view of Maastricht objective.
Beginning in 1992, thousands of workers have contested very hard in the streets the leaders of CGIL CISL-UIL and joined the basic trade-union organisations.
Today, Rdb/CUB has around 100.000 members, it is an independent trade-union organisation, has federations in 22 towns, it is represented in all sectors of work both public and private ones, it participates in all trade-union negotiations both in the public and private sector and in the services (while in the factories it is still discriminated) and promoted also together with other basic trade-union organisations such COBAS the general strikes of all categories. Special success was obtained during the general strikes of October 1992 and those of October and December 1994. The demonstrations promoted by RdB/CUB also succeed in aggregating other sectors and social organisations (such as homeless, unemployed and students). At present an unitarian action agreement has been established between RdB/CUB and other trade-union organisations such as COBAS, USA and SLAI-COBAS which have a more ‘spontaneous’ nature and a theoretic orientation towards the ‘council’ type.
The Political Choice of Building Independent Trade-Union Organisation
The Italian comrades’ decision to create trade-unions independent from the historic trade-union centres, very often gives rise to doubts, perplexities and also open polemics with the comrades of other communist organisations in Europe. Very frequently the comrades remind us about Lenin's indications on the need for the communist to be ‘internal’ also to the reactionary trade-unions. Other comrades consider that there is a risk of minoritarism and ‘isolation’ from the great masses of workers. It is a problem which we have posed to ourselves and which we have very often discussed.
It is a political and theoretical question which we intend to discuss with other comrades. We do not consider to have a ‘model’ valid for all realities, but we are interested in confronting our experience with others.
Let's try to summarise eight points to start our discussion:
When Lenin invited the communists to stay in the reactionary trade unions, was preparing the October revolution. In that contest it was necessary to use all situations for the propaganda, proselytism and political agitation. In fact, on the organisational plan and the relation with masses the main instrument were not the trade-unions but the soviets which represented a more advanced political process. Just repeating such a scheme without relating it with reality becomes objectively dogmatic and therefore not useful to communists.
The creation of basic and independent trade-union organisations, is fundamental because it is the matefia1 condition which allows the connection between the most advanced sector of the class (the party) and the backward one, that is to say all those who follow the ‘trade-union’ lines. This connection cannot be just an organisational one but it should be based on the trade-union autonomy which is the condition for the maximum development of the relations with the mass.
The independent trade-union organisation is a fundamental instrument to organise and mobilise the workers during an historic phase of backwarding and fragmentation of the workers movement as the one we are living in Italy. In order to recompose a class front which is at present heavily desegregated and fragmented, organisations able to promote autonomous, dynamic, unitarian and reaggregating initiatives are necessary. The conscience to be a minority (but to represent the more advanced part of majority class interests) is the exact opposite of a minority logic.
The changes which took place in the class composition of the working force, have some consequences also on the character of the trade-union organisation which the communists decide to build. The growing social fragmentation of the workers in Italy has destroyed the rigidity of the work force and its concentration in the big factories. In Italy, 90% of the firms are small and medium factories (53.5% of them are productive units with less than 20 dependants). The workers in the factories with less than 15 dependants are about 3.1 million out of about 5 million workers in the industry. The workers who have an effective contractual coverage are little more than 9 million out of 20 million occupied workers. 32.3% of metallurgic workers (the strongest category of the industry) work in factories with less than 50 dependants and the 32.5% work in factories with more than 500 dependants. These are structural data which should make reflect.
The situation of work market in Italy
Total work force: 22.7 million
Unemployed and in search of work: 2.6 million
Employed dependent and independent workers: 20.1 million
(of which):
Irregular or ‘not declared’ workers: 2.7 million
Regularly employed workers: 17.4 million
(of which):
Independent regular workers: 4.9 million
Dependent regular workers: 12.5 million
(of which):
Workers of small firms (less than 15 dependants): 3.1 million
Workers with strong contractual protection: 9.4 million
Another factor which weighs on the ‘force relations’ within the work world in Italy is the strong presence of independent workers. They are about a third of the total occupied workers. Only 16% of the independent workers are employed in the industry; 69% are employed in the services and 15% in the agriculture. This is a very strong feature of the Italian economy, very different from the rest of Europe but very similar to the countries of the Mediterranean Europe such as Spain and Greece.
The weight of autonomous work: comparison between Italy and France (in millions of units)
| 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 1994 | 1996 | |
| France | 4.2 | 3.7 | 3.2 | 2.9 | |
| Italy | 6.1 | 6.1 | 6.2 | 6 | 6 |
Part-time work: comparison between Italy and France (in thousands of units)
| 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | ||
| France | 796 | 7621 | 840 | 1.049 | 1.112 | 1.306 | |
| Italy | 184 | 211 | 234 | 246 | 284 | 333 |
A very important aspect which was assumed by the independent trade-union organisations is the territorial extension of their function to recompose the class front. Therefore, not only and not anymore the organisation of the ‘category struggles’ but objectives and struggles which can aggregate regular workers, precarious workers, irregular workers and unemployed. In this context, the independent trade-union organisations have parallely supported the objective of the reduction of the working time to 32 hours together with the claim of a minimum social salary (both in a monetary form and through the gratuitousness of the services) equal for all categories turned out from a stable and fully remunerated work.
Last, but not least important, during the 1960s and 70s our comrades have been internal, active and recognised vanguards in the traditional trade-union organisations which democratically represented the workers (Councils of the factory and of the firm). From within these organisations the comrades have conducted political fights for years as far as it has been possible to use the existing democratic spaces. The same trade-union centres have dissolved the factory councils which today do not exist anymore. They have been replaced by the RSU (Unitarian Trade-Union Representations) within which GCIL-CISL-UIL have a 30% of representatives according to the law independently from the consensus and from the number of members which they count among the workers.
The historical trade-union centres
The historical trade-union centres in Italy are:
CGIL (bound to PCI earlier and then to PDS)
CISL (catholic trade-union bound to DC)
UIL (bound to PSI and parties of centre)
The social composition of these central trace unions has deeply changes. The CGIL was mainly present among workers of the factories, CISL among the workers of the public administration, UIL had a more inferior radication both in the factories and in the public sector. Today reality is different. The share of retired people enrolled with the three trade-union centres is today nearly equal to that of still active workers. In the case of CGIL the number of retired people enrolled exceeds that of active workers. In the case of CISL the number of enrolled people is nearly the same.
|
CGIL
|
CISL
|
UIL
|
||||
| Workers | Retirees | Workers | Retirees | Workers | Retirees | |
| 1987 | 2.782 | 1.985 | 2.270 | 1.340 | 1.295 | 196 |
| 1996 | 2.334 | 2.842 | 2.020 | 1.917 | 1.137 | 405 |
In Italy there are about 15 million wage-earning workers and out of these 5 million 491.000 thousand are members of the historical trade-union centres while 5 million 164.000 thousand are retired people enrolled in these three trade-union centres. This is a data which has always given the idea of a strong trade-unionism of the Italian workers. But reality is different and the ongoing processes introduce very deep changes in this reality.
The independent trade-union organisations need to strictly reconcile but with balance, with the strategic political direction (of the communists) and the autonomy of the mass organisations. The task of the communists inside and at the lead of these new trade-unions is to define the relation between general and specific objectives (sectoriel, categorial, etc.) on the basis of the ‘concrete analysis of the concrete reality’. We consider that this is an historic phase when communists and workers have to work to accumulate the forces and to organise resistance fights in the new strategic sectors of the contradiction between work and capital. In Italy, workers of the strategic services (transports, energy, telecommunications) unemployed, precarious workers of the public and private sector represent today the most advanced resistance point against capitalistic reorganisation.