This article was originally published in Italian in September - October, 2023

From the beginning of February to the present, trade union activity in Italy has continued to take place in the different spheres that we have already listed in our last report:
     - the propaganda on the trade union - political positions and direction in the streets, with leaflets and newspaper stunts, favoring places frequented by workers;
     - the same propaganda in front of workplaces;
     - intervention at trade union events with Party leaflets;
     - activity within the inter - union body known as the Coordination of Self - Convened Workers, to fight for the unitary action of combative unionism;
     - activity within the grassroots trade union organizations;
     - writing articles for the trade union segment of the Party newspaper.

As already mentioned, we go up from a general level - propaganda among the masses in the streets - gradually to more and more characterized and specific levels, up to our press, where the class union line is made explicit in all its aspects and in its connection with and descent from the communist program and theory.

We also organized a public meeting of the Party, in Turin, on April 30, the day before May Day, at the headquarters of the Cobas Confederation, on the theme of trade unions: “The strikes in France, Britain, Germany, and Greece are the beginning of the inevitable extension of the international class struggle. Soon workers in Italy too will have to mobilize. What are the conditions for demonstrating all their strength and determination?”.

In general, the workers’ movement in Italy remains in a state of weakness and passivity, and this is reflected in our activity in the areas listed above.

If we take a look at the overall situation of the class struggle in Italy, the last general movements of a certain strength - inter - categorical, involving the majority of the class - were in 1992, against the agreement that completed the revocation of the “escalator” - which provoked protest from the top of the regime unions and a strengthening of rank - and - file unionism - and that of 1994, against the first pension reform of the Berlusconi government.

The last strong, national branch strike movement, which developed spontaneously with so - called “wildcat” strikes that repeatedly violated anti - strike legislation, was that of the tram drivers from December 2002 to January 2003, which also developed outside and against the regime unions and which strengthened rank - and - file unionism in the sector (“Review and Balance Sheet of the Tram Drivers’ Strike”).

As for factory strikes, there were the 21 days at Fiat in Melfi in April 2004 (“Cobas and FIOM at the Melfi Retrial”), and ten years later the 35 - day strike at Thyssen Krupp in Terni from October to November 2014 (“Terni, A 35 - day Strike Betrayed by the Regime Unions”).

Since 2011, there has been the development and reorganization of rank - and - file unionism in the logistics sector, mainly in SI Cobas but not exclusively. This movement has been considerable, leading to the formation of what is now the second largest rank and file union, the SI Cobas, with approximately 20,000 members, but has remained confined to this category with only minor exceptions.

The first rank and file union has become the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), born in 2010 from the merger of the previous Rappresentanze Sindacali di Base (RdB) with parts of the Confederazione Unitaria di Base (CUB) and the smaller Sindacato dei Lavoratori (SdL). Membership is estimated to be around 40,000. Compared to its origins in 2010 and to the tradition of the principal founding organization - the RdB - the USB has partially changed its character over the past 13 years, reducing the number of members it organizes in the public sector (down to around 16,000, a category which was organized almost exclusively by the RdB) while expanding in the private sector.

Generally speaking, faced with the advance of capitalism’s worldwide crisis of overproduction, we have witnessed regime trade unionism’s march of towards an increasingly open corporatism, resulting in workers’ discouragement, further individualism and resignation, and therefore a lowering of the level of class combativeness, progressing since the late 1970s and reaching a level that has perhaps never been witnessed in the history of the workers’ movement in Italy.

It seems the social peace always coveted by the bourgeoisie has triumphed. However, we know it to be the prelude to a new explosion of class struggle, whose material conditions the advancing crisis of capitalism prepares daily in the social underground and whose first manifestations are already well observed internationally, both in the social movements of revolt that, for now, have maintained an inter - class character - as in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru - and in the strengthening of the trade union struggle’s movement in France, Great Britain, Greece, Turkey and the United States.

All of these countries have experienced the same process of the weakening of the trade union movement that we have described for Italy, albeit in different forms and to different degrees, but in each of them there seems to have already been a reversal of the trend which is not yet evident in Italy.

The weakening of the workers’ struggle has been reflected in the regime’s trade unions themselves, which in Italy have seen both a decrease in their membership and an increasing difficulty in mobilizing the workers in the rare actions they do take, which are mostly demonstrations instead of strikes. But apparently only the CGIL, CISL and UIL leaderships complain about this. After all, the weakness of the working class is, in fact, the best guarantee of their control over it.

On the whole, rank - and - file unionism - both for adverse objective reasons, and for the damaging action of its opportunist leaderships - was unable to counter this progressive weakening of workers’ struggles, and, like the regime unions, suffered a decline in membership and its capacity to mobilize workers.

In those categories where it had been most affirmed in the 1980s and 1990s, on the wave of struggle movements outside and against the regime unions, it lost most of its members: among them, school workers, railway workers, healthcare workers, tram drivers, airport workers and firefighters.

However, the picture is varied among the existing trade union organizations.

The Cobas School, and in general the Cobas Confederation to which they belong, appear to be in serious decline.

The Fiat offensive, started in June 2010 by then CEO Marchionne, led to the almost complete destruction of the SLAI Cobas, which had developed in the Arese (closed in 2005), Termoli and Pomigliano plants. Small rank - and - file groups remain in the factories in Melfi, Termoli, Pratola Serra and Atessa.

The Confederazione Unitaria di Base (CUB), founded in 1992 and since then present in various categories and industries, and which had made a amalgamation agreement with the RdB, giving rise to the joint RdB - CUB federation, has also suffered a sharp decline, as a result of two factors in particular: one, the birth in 2010 of the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), which acquired parts of the CUB; and two, the agreement between the bosses and the regime unions called the “Testo Unico sulla Rappresentanza” of January 2014, first accepted by the Cobas Confederation, then by the USB, then by other minor rank and file unions, but not by the CUB, resulting in its exclusion from the Rappresentanze Sindacali Unitarie, or RSU (a joint representative body).

The crisis of overproduction, in the absence of an already established and robust class union movement, had a depressive effect on workers’ combativity, especially in the manufacturing industry, leading to a retreat of rank - and - file unionism from the positions it had previously gained.

As mentioned, in contrast to what has been outlined so far, a movement developed in the logistics sector that gave rise to the formation of the SI Cobas, and the smaller ADL Cobas. Even the USB is partly at odds with the general regression of rank - and - file unionism.

After this minimal review we come to the trade union activity of the last four months. The low level of conflict was reaffirmed. As in previous years, once the already weak autumn mobilizations had taken place, the following months showed an even lower overall level of coordination.

Added to this was the breakdown of the fragile unity of action of rank - and - file unionism, between the leaderships of the USB and

SI Cobas, in the national demonstration in Rome on December 3, in which we participated by carrying out propaganda and direction work.

This led the USB leadership to proclaim a general strike for Friday, May 26, called and organized without involving any other rank and file unions, the outcome of which was, despite the leadership’s proclamations, resoundingly negative.

Now let’s summarize our activity from February to the present.

On Saturday, February 25, the USB called a national anti - war demonstration in Genoa with the slogan: “Down with weapons, up with wages!” Behind the slogan, however admirable, is the ill - concealed pro - Russian stance of its leadership group.

Five days earlier, on Monday, February 20, we took part in the joint coordination of USB Liguria, in preparation for the demonstration on the 25th. In it we reiterated that the war going on in Ukraine is imperialist on both fronts; that only the workers will be able to stop the generalized imperialist war that is developing; that the strikes and demonstrations against the war and in defense of wages are only a first step on this road.

Two days earlier, on Saturday, February 18, we had spoken at an assembly called by the Genoa SI Cobas in the dockers’ hall. The assembly had as its theme the war in Ukraine and a book written by the political front that leads the SI Cobas was being presented there. This was, therefore, a case of a political grouping using the trade union as an organizational tool for a function unrelated to it, a fact displeasing to many members of the union.

We intervened by explaining that the unitary action of the workers and, to this end, the unitary action of combative trade unionism itself, is fundamental at the trade union level; instead, opportunism is characterized by an inversion of the struggle: it creates political frontism (the leadership of the SI Cobas has composed a political front with Stalinist groups) and trade union sectarianism, dividing and weakening the workers’ actions in struggle.

Also on February 25, we took part in the successful national anti - war demonstration called by the USB, distributing a Party leaflet entitled “The Massacre of Ukrainian and Russian Proletarians Continues and Prefigures the Worldwide One to which Capitalism Wants to Lead All Humanity. Only the International Workers’ Revolution Can Prevent It!”.

With a trade union militant from the opposition tendency in CGIL, we distributed the leaflet calling for the national assembly of the CLA (“Public Assembly – Health Security Repression in the Workplace and On the Ground”), scheduled for Sunday, March 3 in Genoa, which was attended by some 30 people. It was an opportunity to set out in some detail important issues concerning the relationship between the union and the Party and the question of the unitary action of combative unionism. This was done with the introductory speech given by our comrade (“Crucial Questions of Class Unionism Discussed at a CLA Assembly”). The text of this speech was translated by our comrades into English and was published in The Communist Party, n. 54 (as well as republished in this issue). The speech was an opportunity to counter the flimsy arguments of the speaker at the February 18 assembly, also organized by the Genoa SI Cobas.

On March 8, 2023 in Genoa we took part in the demonstration for International Women’s Day, distributing the Party’s leaflet, translated into our press in 16 languages (“It is capitalism that prevents the liberation of women”).

We paid special attention to following the strike movements in France and the UK, reporting on them in our press. This was done in the May - June issue with two articles titled: “In France the General Class Struggle Overwhelms the CGT Bonzes” and “In the UK Strikes and Demonstrations Herald the Awakening of the Working Class”.

What happened there, and especially in France, had a certain reflection among militants of combative unionism in Italy. Delegations, one from USB and one from the Federation of Metalworkers (FIOM), each went - separately - to one of the demonstrations in Marseilles.

In France, the movement was led by a coalition comprising all the unions: those openly collaborationist and regime, such as the CFDT; those covertly so, which was basically the CGT; and the only one that can be considered rank and file, the SUD. The most combative parts of the CGT, Force Ouvriere and the SUD distinguished themselves by not breaking the unity of the strikes called by the “Intersyndacale”, trying to prolong them in the sectors and companies where they were able to do so.

This example was repeatedly used by us - at the assembly of the Genoese SI Cobas, at the confederal Coordination of the USB Liguria, and at the assembly of the CLA - to explain that in Italy it was necessary to indicate, not necessarily a united front with the regime unions, but at least unitary action of the combative unions, which was absolutely necessary. All the trade union - political opportunists who run the rank and file unions ignored this need, despite filling their mouths with fancy - sounding phrases like “do as in France”.

On March 25, in Genoa, we published an appeal by the Genoa CLA for rank - and - file trade unionism in the city to promote a unitary garrison in solidarity with the class struggle movement in France, which was reaching its peak in those days, even facing some repression in some instances (See “For a Unitary Action of Combative Trade Unionism in Solidarity with the Working Class in France”). This appeal, sent to all local union leaders and circulated among our union contacts, also went unheeded.

On March 30 in Rome, the USB organized a national conference centered on the issue of wages. We followed the entire conference, broadcast on the union’s facebook page. Guests and speakers included former INPS President Tridico, a retired university professor of economics who is close to the “5 Star Movement” and head of the bourgeois political party Giuseppe Conte. The conference showed the patently contradictory trade union - political line of the USB leadership, typical of their brand of opportunism.

On the one hand, the USB leaders correctly state that the current crisis is a “systemic” crisis of capitalism and overproduction, and that the only way to defend and increase wages is through struggle. On the other hand, they delude themselves, and the workers, that the way out of the economic crisis of capitalism lies in a return to a policy of strong State intervention, which for them is not bourgeois but democratic. They claim, as does a part of the left within the CGIL, the establishment of a new Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, which was set up in 1933 during the height of fascism and the Great Depression, and which, in the post - war period, progressively expanded its areas of intervention to include some 1,000 companies and with more than 500,000 employees by 1980.

This policy, which relies on the nationalization of companies crushed by the weight of the crisis, has nothing anti - capitalist about it; in fact, it was a project undertaken by Italian fascism, as well as by Nazism and the Anglo - Saxon democracies. It is a path practiced - and a posteriori justified with ideological patches - by every bourgeois state in the face of catastrophic crisis in order to make productive structures barely survive at the expense of the public treasury.

The bourgeois state’s policies of intervention in the economy to “save strategic companies for the country” - as repeated by both regime trade unionism and the opportunism at the head of the rank and file unions - through nationalization, have the aim of leading the proletariat towards the slaughterhouse of imperialist war, the only political - economic policy capable of saving bourgeois privileges and domination. To this end, political nationalism, the basis of which is economic nationalism, is fundamental, as well as maintaining certain factories and production structures in operation. The nationalization of industries under capitalist rule “nationalizes” the proletarian masses, in the sense that it regiments them in nationalist ideology. It brings us closer not to socialism but to imperialist war.

Therefore, while the USB leadership correctly claims strong wage increases and indicates the path of struggle to achieve them, it contradicts this battle with a political direction that is nothing more than the classic social - democratic one, which failed already with the first and second world wars.

The USB conference in Rome, rather than highlighting how to obtain wage increases, focused instead on the question of the “legal minimum wage”, for which the USB leaders trust not in the mobilization of workers, but in the demagogic support of bourgeois politicking. It is in this sense that Tridico’s and Conte’s invitations and interventions are framed.

This is why we have published two articles in our press: the first on the decline of wages in Italy (“The Steady Decline of Wages in Italy”), the second on the issue of the “legal minimum wage”, which we called a mirage to divert workers from the necessary fight for wages (See “The Combativeness of the Workers is Deflected by the Illusion of the Minimum Wage”).

Many will recognize, even within the USB, that without a general struggle of the entire working class, of the appropriate strength, a law on the legal minimum wage would resolve itself into a downward compromise between the bourgeois parties, who ride this bourgeois utopia for mere electoral purposes. On the other hand, if the conditions were in place for a movement of such strength to express itself, then it would not be convenient to channel the expectation of such a law into parliamentary politics, but rather to leave the obtainment of wage increases to direct confrontation with the employers.

It is true what the regime unions claim, that wage levels should be regulated not by law but by bargaining. But they do this because, conducted in their own way, i.e., without a fight, collective bargaining guarantees the bosses the ability to keep wages low. The solution, however, does not lie in the illusion that the downward bargaining of the regime’s trade unions can be circumvented by imposing, with supposed support from parties of the bourgeois left, a law to protect wages. This fully social - democratic and corporatist illusion rests on the idea that capitalism can be conditioned by democratic means, with rules that come to protect the living conditions of proletarians and their class unions.

On this plan rests the other erroneous claim of the restoration of the escalator, advanced by the USB and other trade union currents, e.g., the Trotskist opposition within the CGIL. Yet another plan is that of a law on union representation, which, according to USB leaders, would guarantee class unions the right to be recognized.

These opportunist currents perpetuate the falsehood that democracy is what it says it is, rather than a form of bourgeois class rule - “the best political envelope of capitalism” said Lenin - complementary to despotic and openly fascist forms of government, and which does not change the bourgeois nature of the state at all.

In response to the USB leadership’s most recent address at the March 30th conference, we stated that if it is true that the only way to defend wages is through struggle, then those bourgeois left - wing parties that the USB leadership misguidedly thinks can help the workers should be put to the test as to their real intentions. And not with the demand for a minimum wage, but with the abolition of the anti - strike laws, which prevent a large part of the working class from fighting, particularly those categories of workers that have been fighting in recent months in France and the UK.

Our article on the minimum wage in Italy addressed another diversion used, in this case by regime unionism, to keep workers from returning to the struggle: that of “tax reform”. At the final assembly of the 19th CGIL congress in Rimini, General Secretary Landini called it “the mother of all battles”. The main proponent of the trade union fraction that heads the FIOM in Genoa, which declares itself combative and held its congress in Genoa in December 2022 under the slogan “for a class union”, agreed with the piecard extraordinaire’s statement. In the same article we also denounced this opportunism masquerading as class unionism.

On May Day we distributed the Party’s newspaper at a large demonstration in Turin.

On May 13 in Florence, we took part in a demonstration called by the SI Cobas of Prato against police repression of two of its young local leaders. We distributed a specially drafted leaflet to the 600 or so participants (“For the Rebirth of a Strong Class Union Movement Against Exploitation and Repression”). The marching workers showed great attachment to and trust in their union.

In the logistics sector there were three major strikes. One on April 7 in the main shipping companies (BRT, GLS and SDA), members of the employers’ association Fedit, which succeeded in causing substantial delays in their activities. A second took place at a cooperative warehouse in Pieve Emanuele, south of Milan. A third important strike was conducted by the smaller ADL Cobas, which has been supporting the SI Cobas for years, at the warehouse of Commit Siderurgica, a steel company in Veggiano, in the province of Padua. A fourth major strike took place at the Stellantis plant (formerly Fiat) in Pomigliano d’Arco, in the province of Naples. We reported and commented on these struggles in the July - August issue (“Latest From Regime Unionism in Italy”).