ICP Preface

The two days clearly showed the limits of the unitary course embarked upon for the past year and a half by the leaderships of Rank and File unionism, how because of their political opportunism they are incapable of following through to the end the increasingly urgent and necessary directive of the unity of action of combative unionism, and how therefore that unitary course is shaky, constantly in danger, always revocable.

On Saturday, October 15, at the national assembly convened in Milan by all the Rank and File unions to promote the strike, one of our comrades, speaking on behalf of the Coordinamento Lavoratori Autoconvocati (CLA), had welcomed the new united general strike that followed those of October 18, 2021 and May 20, 2022, and made two proposals:

- That regional or inter-regional demonstrations be held on the day of the strike, so that on the one hand they could concentrate forces a little, and on the other hand allow for easier participation of striking workers in the demonstrations, better than could happen with a national demonstration;

- that the preparation of the strike be as unified as its proclamation, and that for this purpose the assembly give a mandate to set up in each city "unitary territorial strike committees" – open to all workers and trade union bodies that supported the strike – which would take charge of preparing it with territorial assemblies, posters, leaflets; this was also to serve to broaden the unity of action of conflict unionism beyond the perimeter of Rank and File unionism, involving the combative workers’ groups still framed in the regime unions and the class union areas in CGIL.

Nearly all subsequent speeches, including those by various national leaders, had rejected-explicitly or implicitly-the two proposals. What had emerged from them was little concern about the problem, obviously crucial in a strike, of getting the broadest possible wage-earning masses to join it, and to that extent the proposal for the formation of unitary territorial strike committees had been ignored. The strike would be prepared "each union for itself".

Nor had consideration been given to the problem of involving combative workers in the regime unions and class union areas in CGIL. Instead, more emphasis had been given to seeking the participation in the demonstration – which was to be national – of the so-called social, inter-class movements. The central goal was the success, in terms of numbers, of the national demonstration, in order to gain so-called visibility.

In addition to this, all the Rank and File unions except SI COBAS-thus USB, CUB, Confederazione COBAS, SGB and other minor ones-stipulated that they would organize a national demonstration in Rome on the very day of the strike, Friday, December 2. The SI COBAS, on the other hand, would organize a national demonstration, also in Rome, but the next day.
The assembly had then given instructions to participate, in order to promote the general strike, in two already scheduled national demonstrations, on October 22 in Bologna and November 5 in Naples.

In the following weeks, however, the leadership of the Rank and File unions partially changed their minds: on the one hand, they decided to converge on the national demonstration called by SI COBAS for December 3, and on the other hand, to organize local demonstrations on the day of the strike.

This change of directive was positive in that it eliminated the dastardly organization of two separate national demonstrations on two days, converging instead on a single demonstration, and also because it gave a mandate to organize local demonstrations.

However, on the one hand these hesitations and changes of directions negatively affected the already not easy preparation of the strike, and on the other hand the double day of mobilizations, local and national, ended up weakened one a little bit the other.

Local demonstrations on the day of the strike generally had a worse outcome than last year, with the exception of the one in Florence.

The SI COBAS – which held the largest number of preparatory assemblies at workplaces – organized pickets in front of logistics warehouses and at other companies to prevent scabs, thereby making the strike successful in logistics, and did not participate in the city processions, except with delegations and with the exception of Viterbo, where it joined the united union procession. In Rome, on the other hand, the base unions were divided into several garrisons under various ministries, without organizing a united procession.

The strike succeeded, as mentioned, in logistics and partially in transport, where local and category disputes already in place played out: well among railroaders in northern regions, gradually less so going down into central Italy and the south; successful in spots among tramway workers. In the rest of the working class it was, as in previous attempts in years past, largely in the minority.

On the whole, once again the Rank and File unions failed to break through the cloak of working-class passivity – the result of decades of orchestrated defeats by regime unionism and their daily action in the workplace – by presenting themselves as a credible instrument with which to act collectively to demonstrate and fight the problems that workers complain about.

Determining this situation are, on the one hand, the malaise resulting from worsening living conditions that is not yet such as to trigger struggles that spontaneously break such a shroud, except sporadically; on the other hand, the shortcomings and mistakes of the Rank and File unions.

However, a good base of workers organized by confrontational unionism exists, as the national demonstration in Rome the day after the strike showed.

It was a procession with a clear class character, made up of 90 percent workers, totaling at least 8,000 people (6,000 according to the Questura), which followed the classic route of the CGIL’s trade union processions, landing in the large Piazza San Giovanni, usually used by the major regime union for its final psalms, which, however, in its last demonstration on Oct. 8 chose the smaller Piazza del Popolo instead.

Among the Rank and File unions, the largely majority part of the procession was made up of the two large sections of SI COBAS, first, and then USB. In between the two was the smaller one from the SGB. Absent were the COBAS Confederation, CUB, ADL COBAS and the former GKN Factory Collective.

This good result was unfortunately damaged, in addition to the absences of the above organizations, by the conduct of the leaderships of SI COBAS and USB, who in the days leading up to the demonstration clashed no less than around who should hold the lead in the procession.

The result was that the USB section kept its distance from the first half of the procession and, more importantly, that while the SI COBAS section entered Piazza San Giovanni, the USB section stopped 500 meters before, thus two separate rallies were held, and finally the workers were even made to flow down two separate streets!

Our comrades, who attended in good numbers to spread the party’s press and the leaflet calling for a "single class union front", witnessed the concrete and practical manifestation of the division of the workers’ struggle carried out by opportunist union leaderships. To see thousands of workers on one side and miles on the other was painful and cause for anger.

If the entire procession had converged on St. John’s Square, the result would have stood comparison with the CGIL mobilizations of recent years. This is all the more so if the absent Rank and File unions had joined in. In this way, the leaderships of SI COBAS and USB also damaged what was their proclaimed goal of media visibility.

In any case, the free, democratic... and bourgeois press dropped complete censorship on the procession of 8,000 workers who marched through Rome behind the slogan "Let’s lower the guns, let’s raise the wages!", demonstrating how democracy is the best political shell of the bourgeois regime.

A full square, however, filled not only by half the procession and, possibly, still with daylight, would have been more difficult to ignore and hide and would have had a greater effect in working to circulate the news of the mobilization’s success with the tools available to the confrontational unions, which today are basically the so-called "social" ones.

The reason for this conduct of the leaderships of the two largest Rank and File unions lies in their opportunist political and trade union action: if they have no guarantee of controlling or turning out to be the majority force in a struggle action, they prefer to divide and weaken it. It is a conduct that is the child of the petty-mindedness of their conception of the development of the working class struggle movement, typical of the Movementist groups of the 1970s, from which the leading groups come, according to which the political organization – each its own – should retain the leadership of the labor movement from its earliest steps to the apogee of its strength. But in order to achieve this impossible goal, the labor movement is divided, with the result of damaging and retarding its development.

The communist conception of the development of the struggle of the working class does not navigate so blindly and with such a short-sighted strategy. We know that in the labor movement one inevitably has to fight opportunist directives, which are generally in the majority and whose defeat will be possible only by approaching the revolutionary stage of the struggle between classes.

Moreover, we work and live in the sure conviction that the stronger the economic struggle movement of the proletarian class the more favorable are the conditions for the development of the party and for its battle to win the leadership of the labor movement, a goal proclaimed in the light of day and not pursued by petty means of an organizational nature.

Everything must therefore be subordinated to strengthening the economic, trade union, workers’ struggle movement. In the face of the foreseeable attempt of an opportunist union leadership to demand the head of a trade union march, or other dastardly deeds, we, finding ourselves in the leadership of a trade union body, would have nothing to object to, being interested in the unity of the workers in the struggle, confident that this will lead tomorrow to ousting that opportunist leadership group from their position of leadership.

The confirmation of these two days of mobilization is that real, complete, united action of confrontational trade unionism is possible only by organizing the base of these unions, uniting and coordinating union militants aware of this need, forcing the leaderships into it, and it will only be realized definitively to their detriment.

ICP LEAFLET

Rome, Saturday, December 3, 2022

For a united trade union class front!

For the second consecutive year, the leadership of the rank and file unions have called a united general strike, putting aside the divisions that had prevented it in previous years. This is an important step in the direction of the unity of action of combative unionism that is one of the elements necessary for workers to regain confidence in collective action.

The problem of workers’ distrust of trade union struggle is international, but while in some countries-such as England and France-strike movements have developed in recent months in defense of wages against the high cost of living, in Italy, despite the fact that there are on average lower wages than in those countries, workers are still prisoners of individualism, distrust, and resignation.

This condition is the result of decades of regime unionism (CGIL, CISL, UIL, UGL) that has produced only defeats for the working class: counter-reforms of the labor market – which have made precariousness rampant – and of the welfare system, to which they have not opposed any real fighting action; contract renewals that are always losing.

The rank and file unions, however, have failed to channel distrust of the regime unions into strengthening class unionism. Several factors have caused this, one of which has certainly been the conduct of the leadership of rank and file unionism that has divided workers’ actions: since 2008 – the year of the new decisive leap forward of capitalism’s global economic crisis of overproduction – for 13 years, while the bourgeoisie and its political regime – with governments of different colors but all anti-worker – unloaded the economic crisis on the workers, the leadership of the major rank and file unions fought with each other, hindering the formation of a credible trade union alternative to fight the wage-earning masses.

The new course taken by the leadership of the rank and file unions, with the proclamation of united general strikes, is therefore an important first step in the right direction, which should be welcomed and supported. Nevertheless, it is still wholly insufficient to address the increasingly serious situation in which the working class finds itself:
   - as unified as the proclamation of the general strike is, likewise its preparation must be unified! The strike must be prepared in the workplaces where each rank and file union is present, with assemblies, but also, in each city, by forming unitary territorial strike committees, open to all workers’ bodies and to all workers who wish to support it; moreover, the general strike must be complemented by demonstrations of a city-wide nature, at most regional or interregional, which encourage workers’ participation much better than is the case with national demonstrations;
  - the mandate to set up unitary territorial strike committees in each city must also be aimed at the involvement in the general strike of the groups of combative workers still framed in the regime unions and the minority class union areas within the CGIL: unity of union action must go beyond the perimeter of rank and file unionism and extend to all combative unionism!
  - unity of action cannot be limited to the proclamation of the general strike but must permeate daily trade union activity at all its levels: company, territorial, industry and inter-industry! It is necessary, for example, to define unitary contract platforms. Only on the basis of a practice inspired by these principles and protracted over time will it be possible to build that Single Class Union Front necessary to foster the return to struggle of the proletarian masses and to organize a general movement for their immediate goals:
     - good wage increases, larger for the worst paid categories and qualifications!
     - generalized reduction of hours for equal wages!
     - full wages for unemployed workers!
     - reduction of the retirement age!
     - abolition of all laws and agreements against full freedom of strike and union organization!
     - full equal rights for immigrant workers!
     - rejection of all repressive maneuvers against class unionism!
     - renouncing of all actions supporting one side in imperialist wars!

The return to the trade union struggle of the workers is the necessary basis for the strengthening of their political party, which is the authentically communist one, therefore revolutionary and internationalist, which stands on the political line that from Marx goes to Lenin and the Italian Communist Left that founded the Communist Party of Italy, which fought against the Stalinist counterrevolution, in Italy impersonated by the Togliotti’s PCI, and which kept intact the red thread of the revolution with the foundation of the International Communist Party!