January 6, 2017
Graziano Gullotta
The Almaviva affair of a few days ago brought to the headlines one of the structural elements of today’s Italian society: the state of deep trade union crisis.
A general crisis that worsens day by day, both in terms of representativeness and in ideological terms (of which the first aspect is a direct consequence of the second).
The 2016 of Italian workers ends with a series of events that make you think and that lead to inevitable considerations. The now structural consolidation of deaths at work, due to lack of investments in safety and monitoring equipment (1246 according to INAIL data in 2015, 94 more than the previous year), to the increase in production rates already unsustainable, at the the use of precarious workforce in various capacities which, for both psychological and training issues, cannot guarantee quality of work with equal safety. Added to this is the worsening of the bosses’ offensive in general, with open support from the state through its non-elective institutions (that medium-high level bureaucratic apparatus which constitutes the permanent backbone of all those judicial, political and economic offices that do not vary with the elections) as well as through the whole range of political parties that have alternated in the roles of representation and government, manifesting the inability to provide concrete answers to the urgent needs of the whole people (the last exemplary gesture, the 20 billion euros taken from workers’ pockets and given away to a private bank, all in a very short time). And finally, the (not surprising) surrender of the confederal unions with the approval of a national contract for metalworkers that fully fulfills the interests of collaborating companies and unions, with the notorious “corporate welfare”, but certainly does not protect the interests of the workers who should be protected in the first place.
Inside the factory, the confluence of these elements, in combination with the intensification of the now ten-year capitalist economic crisis, makes it clear how the system of trade union democracy and representation, built and conquered with the struggle of entire generations in the last century, has definitively become unusable for workers’ interests: both in the “method”, that is, in the election and representation mechanism, and the agreement of January 10, 2014 had given us a strong first proof of this; both in the “merit”, with the approval of the latest national metalworkers contract which today establishes the lowest point reached in the era of national category contracts.
The distrust towards political parties, justifiable, understandable and at the same time ridden very well by movements that do not offer structural solutions (5-star movement and Northern League among all), is a small thing compared to the generalized distrust that is perceived within the factories towards of the institution of the trade union itself and of the specific organizations in particular: nobody is exempt from this judgment, not even the glorious CGIL that bears, in fact, a more important representative and historical responsibility in this phase of demobilization, comparable in size and social consequences with the political massacre carried out by the “communist” leaders at the PCI in 1991.
A real context of the situation in the class struggle practice that also negatively affects the embryonic process of building a class trade union, always within these now worn-out rules: the organizational and ideological weakness of these small entities and the need that cannot be postponed to raise the level of conflict with tools capable of responding blow to blow to the employer attack, highlighting major shortcomings in this type of route, suggesting that perhaps the modalities and the roads may be different and with different results.
It is unthinkable that the elevation of the level of confrontation in factories, with prolonged strikes, occupation and workers’ control of the workplace, could be self-managed, or completely self-managed by workers, in this precise historical phase in which workers are at the mercy of concertative and collaborationist trade unions and opportunist and chauvinist parties. The presence of the Communist Party inside and outside the factories is necessary. Inside to agitate and organize specific struggles, outside to coordinate and give homogeneity to the same struggles and a political horizon of real progress in the correlation of forces (rapporti di forza).
On the other hand, at the historical level, the Italian trade union experience has been characterized from the outset with a dialectical relationship between the actual trade union organization and the class party, first the Socialist Party and then the Communist Party. This relationship meant that the territorial roots of the class and mass trade unions provided more or less indirectly, cultural and social support, more than electoral support (the degeneration of the trade union as a mere electoral tool in the workplace, which the communists reject, it is a wrong perspective that has gradually established itself in the years of the revisionism of the PCI, decades after its birth), and that constituted a forge of cadres of proletarian extraction for the political organization. The party in turn engaged in the political direction of the factory struggles and at the legislative level in the institutional struggle for the construction of more favorable conditions of struggle.
Today we are in a new situation: there is no class party or class trade union, if not in an embryonic state. The old organizational model of trade union representation, even if in crisis, remains the institutional system of representation within the factories and workplaces with which the communists have to deal.
This model is based on two pillars: the election of unitary trade union representatives (RSU, rappresentanze sindacali unitarie) and the practicability of struggles for “reformist” improvements in the context of corporate economic relations. It is clear that both of these pillars are running out or are already exhausted. If it has been clear for some time that the margins of reformist progress within our society no longer exist, even on the type of election and trade union representation, the system proves that it is not keeping up with the times and the needs of the workers , with a large part of workers with atypical, temporary or vouchers contracts being excluded, who, under constant employer blackmail, do not actually participate in these elections ending up further increasing their distrust towards the trade union institution.
The role of a revolutionary class party should therefore focus on the construction, with the workers and among the factory workers, of a new structure, a new organization. The party cadres, the most conscious avant-garde or simply the most sensitive workers to the daily injustices imposed by the bosses, must be organized in new strctures, independent and autonomous from the companies and from the collaborationist trade unions. The “new” trade unionists, with or without a party card, must be valued and really voted by the workers, by all the workers, by all the wageheads under the same roof (sotto il capannone), whatever is their contract, and must respond to the general class interests which are the most advanced interests of the working class, but above all by responding to the immediate interests of their representatives: avoiding what usually happens and what happened once again in this last consultation, that is, given in hand, to register a participation that it cuts off a huge proportion of workers when about 40% have not voted or had no opportunity to do so.
On the centenary of the first proletarian and socialist revolution in history, communists from all over the world wonder about the reasons for the victory and about the mistakes and causes for the defeat. In the meantime, the class struggle continues: the Communists in Italy today are committed to restoring awareness and protagonism to the battered working class of our country, the class around which the entire proletariat will gather, for a leap of dignity, a recovery (riscossa) and then a revolution.
Source: La Riscossa
Pelo Anti-Imperialismo 