A-Infos (en) Italy, Umanita Nova #27-25 - Rebel streets everywhere. October 3: an illegal strike (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla on the evening of October 1st 
prompted the immediate call for a strike, which began on October 3rd 
with different calls from various unions: CGIL, USB, CUB, COBAS, 
UNICOBAS, SGB, and COBAS Sardegna. An immediate strike, called without 
regard to the limitations imposed by Law 146, but nevertheless based on 
an article of the same law, which provides for exemptions from the 
10-day notice period in cases of serious danger to worker safety and 
situations that jeopardize constitutional protections. What constitutes 
danger and prejudice is obviously a purely political question.

Law 146 was established in 1990 precisely to limit the right to strike 
in sectors providing "essential services." Needless to say, the concept 
of essential services was invented to limit the possibility of striking. 
Let's not imagine these activities to be limited to hospitals or other 
areas of extreme emergency, because the term "essential service" has 
included, for example, a number of public sector sectors that can easily 
postpone their services without causing anyone to die.

Schools are a special case, emblematic of their speciousness. Essential 
services in schools concern exclusively the care of animals in 
agricultural schools with stables, as well as, for all schools, a tiny 
portion of the school year, coinciding with the days of assessments and 
exams and the payment of salaries for temporary staff. Despite these 
very limited and well-defined areas of essential services, Law 146 
regulates the school sector at every time of the year and in every 
school. It should be noted that the reference to assessments was 
introduced after the assessment freezes of the late 1980s (the practice 
of fighting "blocks" is not exclusively an invention of the current 
period) secured significant contractual increases. And just to give a 
current example, when the recent security decree was being discussed, it 
was proposed to include logistics among essential services, making 
strikes punishable in a highly dynamic sector, ready to mobilize 
significantly.

Returning to the strike announcement for October 3rd: the promoting 
unions had declared for days that, should there be an attack on the 
Flotilla, an immediate strike would be called, and so it was. The Strike 
Guarantee Commission, a government oversight agency, promptly declared 
the announcement unlawful, not recognizing the reasons for the exemption 
from the notice period and ordering its revocation, which, however, did 
not occur. The strike was maintained. This is no small feat, given that 
the envisaged financial penalties are extremely severe for the calling 
unions-not all of which have substantial coffers-and that workers 
participating in the strike could also face sanctions.

The government and the right immediately exploited the Commission's 
pronouncement as if it were the supreme judgment of a superior and 
infallible entity, rather than the expression of a body serving the 
government's needs. They spread threats that, however, did not work, 
because thousands of people-workers, students, and ordinary 
citizens-gathered in many cities. The strike was not characterized by 
the standard two-hour march along a communicated route, but in many 
situations it expressed itself with protests that lasted an entire day, 
spilling over everywhere, preceded by similar widespread demonstrations 
in the previous days, reaching port entrances, highways, ring roads, 
train stations, and airports. A mass response unlike anything seen in a 
long time. It will be difficult to sanction a strike like this. It is 
difficult to issue disciplinary measures for such large numbers of 
workers who responded to a strike so immediately that no formal 
declaration of illegitimacy had time to reach the workplace, despite 
what was trumpeted by the media. Not to mention that some sectors were 
also protected by previous strike calls and that the entire private 
sector does not have to comply with the limitations of Law 146. 
Sanctioning the calling trade unions will not be so automatic either. 
The Guarantee Commission's own injunction ("...it is therefore 
impossible that the events related to the blockade of the Flotilla's 
navigation, however serious, justify, in the sector of essential public 
services, the subject of Law No. 146 of 1990, a derogation from the 
notice rules.") does not have the peremptory tone used on other 
occasions and recognizes the gravity of the Flotilla's situation. It is 
not at all irrelevant that a government agency uses a concessional 
phrase to declare a strike illegitimacy, given the tone, the terms used, 
and the clear-cut behavior used by the government for the Flotilla. Of 
course, we cannot rely on syntax alone. We trust instead in the strength 
of a mass movement that has given this strike momentum, that has even 
driven, even if only for a day, the CGIL from its gloomy cathedrals of 
legality. We trust in what we have seen and participated in: the 
overturning of rules and prohibitions. In recent days, everything has 
been violated, from the anti-strike laws to the security decree, to the 
red zones. Being present and actively participating in all of this was 
and is important. Knowing that we played a role in instigating all of 
this, with our organizations, our methods, our practices, and our 
content, expressed for years in movements and in the workplace, gives 
meaning to our actions.

Patrizia Nesti
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