On 9, 10 and 11 June there was held at Tivoli the national confederal assembly of trade union delegates to the Second Congress of the Unione Sindacale di Base.

The lengthy process leading up to the congress had begun on 26 November 2016 at the National Councils of the Private Sector Employees (Lavoro Privato), of the Public Employees (Pubblico Impiego), and at the National Confederal Council, which governs the union as a whole. The following day the National Co-ordinations, the Council’s smaller leading organs elected by the Councils and which in their turn elect the even smaller Executives, made public their respective congressional rules.

On 21 January 2017 the Confederal national Co-ordination approved – unanimously – the Confederal congressional document. Also in January, the document of the newly arisen USB Federazione del Sociale ^xii, of which more later, was drawn up.

We should clarify here that a “congressional document” outline proposals for the programme a union should follow between one congress and the next and it is the leadership of a union that produces this document. Thus the USB leadership wrote one document for each of the three main branches of the union: private sector, public sector, and the union as a whole; and also other congressional documents for the union’s minor branches: Federazione del Sociale, ASIA, Pensionati.

On 10 and 11 February the documents for the respective congresses of the USB Public Sector and Private Sector Employees, supplementing the Confederal one, were approved.

On 28 February a national assembly set in motion preparations for the first congress of USB Pensioners.

Workplace meetings were held in March; by 12 April the provincial congresses, and in early May the regional congresses, of the Public and Private Sector employees had taken place.

In Tivoli on 10 May the first national congress of USB Pensioners was held; on 13 May there was both the national congress of the USB Public Sector employees and the sixth congress of ASIA USB (Tenants and Residents Association); on the 14 May there was the national congress of Private Sector employees.

By the end of May the Confederal regional congresses had taken place, finally leading in June, at the end of this long drawn-out process, to the national Congress.

This second congress, just like the first one in 2013, would revolve around just one document. Yet again the congress rules made no provisions for a plurality of documents to be presented and discussed at all stages of the congressual process, from base to summit.

Only within the National, Confederal and Public and Private sector Co-ordinations, which had met to launch the congress on 21 January and 11 February, could different documents, if presented by at least three members (in 2013 it was five), be discussed, from which however only one document could be selected and put out for discussion at the company, provincial, regional and national levels.

Thus was ruled out both the possibility of debating documents supported by minorities within the national co-ordinations – something formally permitted even within the Cgil – and the possibility of alternative documents being presented by the rank-and-file of the union, if supported by a certain proportion of its members.

The congress debated only one document presented by the union leaders. It would concede that motions to amend the document and items on the agenda could be proposed. And that is what happened.

The fact that regulations of this type have been unanimously approved by the Public and the Private Sector Employees’ National Co-ordinations – we don’t know the outcome of the vote in the Confederal Co-ordination – indicates that there is a serious lack of understanding about the ways and means required to manage and develop an authentic class union; although maybe some have just taken the opportunist decision not to oppose them.

To block free expression of the different opinions within the trade union organization, instead of defending free expression and being disciplined enough to achieve a healthy co-existence, can only lead to periodic crises, as has already been the case. The first congress was marked both by the departure from the USB of the greater part of the Varese, Brescia and Legnano Federations, and of a smaller part of the Milan Federation, and by the non-participation of three national Co-ordinations within the ministries of Infrastructure and Transport, Defence, and National Heritage and Culture. In February 2016 there was the split which led to the formation of the SGB (which we will refer to in the second part of this article) ^xiii.

In general terms our line is that we are opposed to splits within the trade unions. For example, our comrades within the USB contributed to the battle against the leadership’s decision to sign up to Testo Unico sulla Rappresentanza Sindacale (see note below), but they opposed and criticised the choice made by those who, after having led that internal struggle, decided to abandon the union.

One cannot however entirely lay the blame for those departures and splits on those who left. The leadership are also to blame.

The congressional rules, internal regulation and statutes of trade unions are obliged to specify the executive’s disciplinary responsibilities, but they should likewise guarantee full freedom of expression to the different trade union tendencies, as regards practical and concrete approaches rather than private ideologies, and allow these groupings the freedom to organize within the union and promote their views on union policy, by presenting alternative documents at congresses, organizing meetings, writing and distributing their literature, etc.

To put obstacles in the way of freedom of expression out of fear it will divide and weaken the union produces the opposite effect. The (apparent) homogeneity which currently exists within the leading organs of the USB, as well as being the fruit of earlier crises which wasted much precious energy and caused many militants to leave, is a far from definitive result. As new groups of workers join and the organisation expands, a plurality of internal currents will form as a matter of course, and the best way of disciplining their activity would be to make correct use of the instrument of congresses at the various levels, by engaging in discussion and weighing up the different viewpoints. If this doesn’t happen the forces with no means of expressing themselves or of existing within the organization are bound to leave.

With democracy a mere façade and internal dissent repressed you don’t encourage the growth of a large class trade union but trade union fragmentation instead; this is the perennial defect of rank-and-file trade unionism from which the leadership of the USB believes, or wants to believe, it has emancipated itself.

(In the next part we will go on to consider the trade union policy which emerged from the congress).

 

i - RdB - roughly translated, ‘Base/Rank-and-File Trade Union Representations’. We will translate the Italian word base, which appears in the denominations of several of the other organizations referred to, as either ‘Base’ or ‘Rank-and-File’ as seems appropriate.

ii - SdL - Workers’ Union.

iii - CUB - Amalgamated Rank-and-File Confederation.

iv - Italian Workers’ Trade Unions’ Confederation.

v - Confederation of Base Committees.

vi - USB - United Rank-and-File trade unions.

vii - Cgil - Italian General Confederation of Labour, the biggest trade union federation in Italy. Although now firmly national-patriotic in orientation, it uses its past history and connection with the pre-war CGL to project a left-wing image; all the better to corral unsuspecting militants, and head off their struggles into channels acceptable to the ruling class.

viii - The FIOM is the metalworkers union within the Cgil.

ix - “Il sindacato è un’altra cosa” - rough translation: The union is another thing/something else.

x - Testo Unico sulla Rappresentanza Sindacale (TUR) - (Unified Text on Trade Union Representation). The TUR, which came into effect in January 2014, is effectively an agreement between the Regime workers’ Unions on the one hand and the bosses’ Confederation - the so-called “Confindustria” - on the other. It defines “rules on trade-union representation”, establishing, among other things, that the right to be included in the trade union representation at the company level, and to participate in the national CCNL negotiations, is conditional on agreeing to limitations on the freedom to strike.

xi - In Italy actually there are two kinds of Trade Unions Representative Body at company level. One type is the “Rappresentanze Sindacali Unitari” (RSU), first established in 1993 through an agreement between the Regime Unions and the Bosses’ Organizations, and replacing the earlier “Consigli di fabbrica” (Factory Councils), which were established from the late sixties by workers and unions without the agreement of the bosses. The TUR renewed the rules which had established the RSU, and placed them more under the control of the regime unions. The other type of Trade Union Representative Body at the company level is the RSA, “Rappresentanze Sindacali Aziendale”, which were given legal recognition in 1970”.

xii - Federazione del Sociale - Social Workers’ Federation. xiii - While translating this article into English, news reached us on 28 February 2018 of another major exodus from the USB, of a part (possibly the greater part, it is too early to say) of the union’s structure working in the commercial sector (USB Commercio), with its national leadership, union representatives and hundreds of members moving across to the Confederazione Cobas. The USB’s growth in the commercial sector over the last few years, (possibly greater than among the metal workers, another area where it had grown significantly) had been one of the major successes achieved by this union, and this has now been gravely compromised.

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