A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #340 - ITALY: Thirty years of grassroots unionism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In the latest issue of Collegamenti per l'organizzazione diretta di 
Classe["Links for Direct Class Organization"], our comrade Cosimo 
Scarinzi attempted to take stock and reflect on grassroots trade 
unionism in Italy. If the history of these last decades of the class 
struggle in the peninsula differs in many points from that of France, it 
seemed to us that the questions, the difficulties, the contradictions 
encountered there are similar there. misunderstand those we know here (1).
When we question grassroots unionism today, it is necessary to keep in 
mind that it is a very complex set of organizations, activists, workers 
that has existed since the beginning of the 1990s. Obviously, it did not 
appear out of nowhere: there already existed trade union organizations 
to the left of the institutional unions and above all, in the 1980s, 
significant mass movements outside the control of these unions, in the 
sectors of school, transport and health; but a consistent perspective of 
alternative unionism only dates from the beginning of the 1990s. It is 
therefore appropriate to question the social and political conditions 
which determine this situation.

We must start from what has been called the end of the social-democratic 
compromise consisting of putting in place a series of measures such as 
privatizations, the reduction of public services (therefore indirect 
salaries) and pensions, the development of precarious work. This drift 
gave rise to the hypothesis according to which the offensive of capital 
would provoke a resumption of the class struggle in terms of the living 
conditions of workers. In fact, the crisis of capital has determined, on 
a planetary level, responses which have only postponed the 
contradictions until later, but made them even deeper (2).

We must then consider that the choice of institutional unions to accept 
a compromise consisting of assuming the worsening of the living 
conditions of the proletarians in return for maintaining their right to 
manage the negotiations and the financing that they receive from the 
bosses and the government provoked reactions among workers, union 
activists and even among part of the union hierarchies, which culminated 
in what is called "bolt week" (3).

The hypothesis of a reaction from workers was therefore realized, but to 
an extremely limited extent. Faced with the brutality of the capitalist 
offensive and the need for an extraordinarily radical level of 
confrontation to reverse the situation, the reaction of the class, 
particularly in Italy, was, even in the strongest moments like the 
strikes against the pension reform, absolutely limited and defensive. In 
a way, we can say that the level of social integration of the class has 
reduced its capacity for autonomous initiative.
Regarding the union political framework, it was clear that building a 
real union required a critical mass of activists, executives, and 
organizers with experience and strong roots in the workplace. However, 
after the "bolt week", this condition was not met. Most activists rooted 
in workplaces, particularly in factories, adhere to the FIOM 
CGIL[metallurgie CGT]; many come from the experience of the new left 
groups and the movements and struggles of the 1970s: they are 
subjectively radical and strongly hostile to the choices of the union 
bureaucracy, and they have demonstrated this by harshly challenging 
their leadership. At the same time, the hypothesis of a break with the 
organizations to which they belong does not convince them.
This is an understandable attitude because it is one thing to wage a 
political battle against the decisions of one's own leadership group, it 
is another to build an organization, a complex and difficult undertaking 
that they clearly do not feel comfortable with. equipped. Because, most 
often, the activists of the left of the CGIL were formed within a 
political culture based on the division between, on the one hand, a 
union field where unity is central and where it is normal to take for 
granted that the union tends towards mediation, and, on the other, the 
political sphere in which radical positions, when they exist, are the 
prerogative of groups of the... radical left.

On the other hand, due in particular to the choice of many activists to 
join grassroots unionism, the left of the CGIL will be reduced over the 
following decades to a marginal role, crushed by a solid apparatus 
impervious to pressure from the grassroots. but capable, when necessary, 
of taking "extremist" turns in order to exploit the discontent of 
certain sectors which emerges from time to time.

However, there is a counter-example: the only experience of 
organizational rupture consistent with institutional unionism is that of 
the FIM CISL[Italian Metallurgical Federation of the CISL, the second 
Italian union, founded in 1950, of Christian inspiration]of Milan and of 
Lombardy, which had largely left the organization to which it belonged, 
giving birth to FLM Uniti, which was to be one of the main founding 
groups of the Confederazione unitaria di base (CUB).
In the choice of the group which gives life to FLM Uniti there is a 
mixture of continuity and discontinuity of its political culture. On the 
one hand, the courage to make a difficult choice that, a short time 
before, I considered improbable; on the other, the reference to a vision 
of the union as an autonomous subject, until now absent or weak on the 
left of the CGIL.
The CUB is the attempt to create a union characterized by strong and 
claimed autonomy in relation to the bosses and the government, which is 
obvious, but also in relation to the parties and, in general, in 
relation to political subjects who want be the expression of the 
workers' movement. It is therefore an attempt to promote a broad 
grouping which, within certain limits, has worked, but which, over the 
years, will lead to internal tensions, in particular between the 
original movement of the FIM and that of the Rappresentanze sindacali di 
base (RdB), a union pre-existing the CUB, which would later lead to the 
exit of RdB from the CUB and the birth of USB.

On the other hand, the fact that there is no alternative union strong 
and sufficiently rooted to bring about a centripetal force of attraction 
has favored the choice of other militant groups to create organizations 
based on political and union hypotheses. different.
It suffices to note that the existence, depending on the period, of 
three or four unions of a certain consistency and of a small galaxy of 
organizations based locally or, in any case, of very modest size, is a 
factor of weakness on the union ground itself which weighs on the 
credibility of all grassroots unionism.

Let's return to the questions asked in the introduction:
In the first place, there has not been a cycle of struggles of such 
magnitude and duration as to implicate, on the one hand, the employers 
and the government and, on the other hand, the the apparatus of 
institutional unions. Certainly, there have been significant 
mobilizations, but on individual or category issues and, particularly in 
industry, they have rarely gone beyond the defense of workers in 
companies in crisis.

We are thinking here of the significant mobilizations of school workers, 
of the first struggles of drivers and of those of logistics workers, 
largely immigrants, but with the partial exception of logistics where 
the SI Cobas and, to a lesser extent, the AdL Cobas, the CUB and the USB 
have strengthened themselves, they have not had the impact necessary to 
achieve important victories and promote the development of grassroots 
unionism.
So while the activist generation trained in the 1970s has retired, the 
new activist generation has not been adequately trained. Certainly, 
there is no shortage of young comrades, often capable and generous, but 
let us note that there are not enough of them.

To conclude on these points, I think that a definitive judgment would be 
erroneous and unfair. This generation played an important role in 
several equally important struggles, led significant initiatives in 
relation to important social movements such as NO TAV (against the 
Lyon-Turin line project), Non una di meno[feminist movement], against 
military spending, etc. The problem is that this is clearly not enough 
and that either new effective means of action and organization will be 
found, or there is a risk of falling into routine.

I will now try to add some schematic considerations on a specific 
problem that many comrades are asking themselves, namely to what extent 
grassroots unionism really is grassroots.
A number of facts are absolutely obvious, and I will try to summarize 
them in a form that is, in some respects, brutal and even excessive:

1. the activists of alternative trade unionism, as a general rule, have 
in no way developed an identity comparable to that of the direct action 
trade unionists of the beginning of the last century, particularly with 
regard to the criticism of parliamentarism and the political class. We 
could emphasize that this same direct action unionism was, from this 
point of view, contradictory, but we must keep in mind that the general 
vision of the social question which characterizes the majority of 
"alternative unionists" is, at best, radically welfarist, and that the 
break with institutional unions essentially concerns the fact that the 
latter are totally subordinate to state and employer policies;

2. alternative unions which have held up well and developed are 
characterized by the presence of a number, certainly limited in absolute 
value and in proportion, of institutional unions, of civil servants and 
seconded agents. In other words, it is a small but established 
bureaucracy, which has stabilized and consolidated over time. I use the 
term bureaucracy here not in a polemical sense, but to indicate a fact 
and a social group whose members can be people of great honesty and 
great capacity for work, but who have, inevitably , a way of dealing 
with problems which starts, above all, from the need for growth of the 
organization;

3. the same daily activity of individual and collective protection that 
alternative unions guarantee could not take place without this small 
device. Workers who organize with a union, with any union, expect at 
least legal protection, advice on wages, taxes, pensions, sickness, 
etc.; and this work, as soon as it exceeds a certain scope, requires 
specialized skills and availability of time that it is not easy to 
demand from activists who spend their day in production. Of course, what 
I am saying does not exclude that a large part of this work can be done 
by workers and company delegates, but volunteering must first exist and 
be characterized by a certain competence, and, then, that it has limits;

4. the device tends to control the organization that produced it. Its 
members can devote themselves full time to union work, they know the 
situation, they are in contact with business collectives, they can guide 
the discussion and decisions, they have information that is not 
available to members, who truth be told are usually not even interested 
in having them.
I obviously do not intend to pretend that "this is the reality and there 
is not much that can be done"; on the contrary, I believe that on this 
order of questions a reflection and an investigation should be launched, 
based on our concrete experience, and that it is precisely Collegamenti 
per l'organizzazione directly of class which should and which can 
promote this reflection and this survey.

CS

Notes

1. See for example in CA 336 of January 2024 "SUD education; from 
radical unionism to collaboration."

2. Capital's response to the crisis of the 1960s had two aspects. On the 
one hand, the fragmentation of work with precariousness, aggressive 
competition, relocations and the ever-increasing use of migrant and 
female labor. On the other, financialization which has accelerated the 
process of deconstruction of work and the conditions of exploitation.

3. In September 1992, the Amato government returned to the attack with a 
finance bill of 93,000 billion lire and a full-blown attack on pensions. 
In the streets, workers expressed their anger against Amato, but also 
against the agreement of the previous July. The secretary of the CGIL, 
Trentin, was booed in Florence, then the UIL in Milan, the CISL in 
Naples. It is impossible to conclude the rallies: whistles and shouts 
dominate, bolts rain from the crowd. The protest grew to such an extent 
that the press called this period the "bolt season (or week). Union 
leaders speak protected by security personnel equipped with Plexiglas 
shields. The press and media, as well as union leaders and leaders of 
the Democratic Left Party, launched a campaign calling the demonstrators 
provocateurs. L'Unità of September 23 headlines "Autonomy attacks 
Trentino, but 150,000 people applaud it". In reality, workers not only 
tolerate those who throw bolts, but they do everything to prevent union 
leaders from ending their rallies with whistles and shouts. The wave of 
protest is growing day by day and, in an attempt to stem it and regain a 
minimum of credibility, a four-hour national strike is called for 
October 13. History repeats itself: the strikes are even more widespread 
(150,000 people in Milan, 100,000 in Bologna and Naples), the 
demonstrations are more numerous.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4158
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