The restriction on the general strike proclaimed by the CGIL and UIL unions on the part of the so - called Strike Guarantee Commission (CGS) and the subsequent injunction by the Ministry of Transport has been causing quite a stir in the media, all financed by the ruling class’ State and in the hands of groups of capitalists.

The puppets on the scene - their strings held from above by the bourgeoisie and its State - seek to use the occasion to their own advantage, having known perfectly well from the beginning how things would turn out and having no intention of changing their course.

On November 10, the Minister of Transport shouted from the rooftops that workers “can’t strike for 24 hours”, as if he did not know that the Guarantee Commission had already intervened - two days earlier - in exactly those terms, telling CGIL and UIL to reduce the duration of the public transit workers and railroad workers’ strike, and to annul the strike in aviation and environmental hygiene (garbage collectors).

The CGS carried out this limitation of the strike proclaimed by the CGIL and UIL for Friday, November 17, not because of the minister’s rumblings, but simply because it applied the anti - strike laws passed in 1990 (Law 146) and 2000 (Law 83). However, by acting in this way, the Minister was able to appear as a winner in the tussle, which is what he really wanted.

His injunction order, issued on Tuesday, November 14, merely follows what the CGS had already decided, except for the railroad workers, whose strike is reduced not to 8 hours - as the CGS demanded - but to 4.

To avoid the intervention of the CGS, it would have sufficed, on the part of the CGIL and UIL leaderships, to proclaim a real general strike: that is, of all categories and throughout the country, on a single day. In this way, again under the terms of the law, the CGS could not have intervened with any restrictions. Instead, CGIL and UIL divided the general strike by sectors and territories: on November 17, all categories should have gone on strike only in central Italy, while at the national level only some sectors: transport, ports, logistics, environmental hygiene and civil service.

In recent days, government politicians have reintroduced a return to the gabbie salariali, i.e., what in Italian is called a “wage cage”. In other words, a local pay scale. The CGIL and UIL caged the non - general strike, divided by sectors and territories.

Landini cackles against the intervention of the CGS, but, like the Minister of Transport, he knew full well what he could do to avoid its intervention, and how it would have gone instead by proclaiming a watered - down general strike.

The anti - strike laws, now enforced by CGS to curtail the CGIL and UIL strike of November 17, were wanted precisely by CGIL, CISL and UIL to hinder the strengthening of rank - and - file unions underway throughout the 1980s, which proclaimed real strikes, allowing workers in so - called “essential services” to defend their wage and employment conditions.

The Minister’s injunction order is also fully within his powers as defined by Article 8 of that anti - worker law, which was desired by the CGIL and its cronies. Of course now the CGIL and UIL denounce the flimsiness of the reasons given by the minister in support of his action, but the injunction is there, and the strike has been struck.

Thanks to those laws, the fundamental weapon of the combative unions, the fundamental weapon of the workers themselves, was blunted. It is no coincidence that in those sectors, albeit gradually and partially, the advance of rank - and - file unionism was halted and a decline began.

It should be remembered that these laws were passed by a pentapartito central government (De Mita, 1990) and a center - left government (D’Alema, 2000). The Italian bourgeoisie did not have to wait for a “right - wing government” to benefit from one of the most restrictive laws on the freedom to strike in Europe.

While even today, in Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, workers in the categories subject to the laws wanted by CGIL, CISL, and UIL strike for days, or even a whole week; in Italy, however, they cannot do so for more than a day, on pain of heavy economic penalties.

But the CGIL and UIL are not interested in the strength of mobilization and strike action. All this hubbub, just as it was useful to the minister, is equally useful to them because it offers a varnish of radicalism to trade union organizations that have lost all credibility and authority among the working class; trade union organizations which owe their existence not to the strength they are given by the proletariat, but to the recognition that the bosses and their State give them as fundamental instruments of opposition to militant and combative unionism.

The regime unions wanted the anti - strike laws to fight class unionism and now they pretend to grieve over the enforcement of such laws. In the meantime, a handsome bourgeois - the CEO of Milan’s local public transport company (ATM), on the board of directors of the one in Rome (ATAC) and president of an employers’ association belonging to Confindustria (AGENS) - has sent to trusted parliamentarians a draft bill for a further crackdown on trade union struggle, limiting the power to call strikes (for now, only among railroad workers) to the most representative unions, that is, the CGIL, CISL, UIL, and, in this category, the autonomous FAISA - CISAL.

It is certainly not to be expected that the leadership of these regime unions will lift a finger: they would toast in the privacy of their rooms to the approval of such a law. The UIL’s Confederal Secretary himself, in his joint press conference with the CGIL’s Confederal Secretary, did not fail to take a swipe at rank - and - file unionism, claiming that the CGS would not affect strikes promoted by militant unionism but only those promoted by the CGIL and UIL. A good lie, but one that hints at where this whole set - up is going.

The chairwoman of the Guarantee Commission herself, after claiming that there needed to be a further tightening of the remaining freedom to strike as far as - for now - general strikes are concerned, said in the press on November 15 that, “[i]n reality, then, stricter rules would be to the advantage of the large traditional unions and to the disadvantage of the small unions”!

The current clash is thus the usual tired theater of bourgeois politics in which the various parties try to carry water to their own mill: the right as well as the bourgeois left, the collaborationist and regime unions, all speculate and profit from it.

The losers are the workers and their genuine organizations of class struggle, the real target of all the puppets on stage.

For this operation to fail, the workers must tear down the puppet show, and they can only do so by uniting the forces of combative unionism.

The militant workers still in the collaborationist unions and the remaining combative sections in the CGIL cannot stand idly by as their leaderships assuredly will. They must join the rest of the combative unions in the struggle to oppose this looming attack on the freedom to strike.

The combative unions have finally regained unity of action by proclaiming a national rank - and - file strike for November 27 - a first test of their resolve and ability to unite the actions of militant class unionism.