Italy's rank and file assembles

Submitted by Matthew on 6 June, 2012 - 8:32

“The urgent need in this country is for a government of workers to decide its direction.”

So said Dante De Angeli, an Italian train driver, one among 500 delegates representing workplace and factory committees at an assembly in Rome on 3 June.

They met against a background of the economic crisis and the savage austerity programme of Mario Monti. The 20-year decline in wages and living standards is plummeting yet further.

The words of another delegate summed up succinctly the purpose of the assembly: ”The unity of the trade union movement so far [i.e. the “Social Contract” of the Confed unions CGIL, UIL, CISL] has brought only disaster for those who work. We need another kind of unity, based on the democratic involvement of the workers and their delegates as the basis for a fighting movement of resistance”.

The animating principle was the imperative to overcome the crippling historic divisions that have been a ball and chain at the feet of the Italian working class for decades.

Sunday’s assembly, following that a week earlier in Florence of the metalworkers of FIOM, which affirmed a similar militant project, points to the real possibility of ending the effective paralysis of the workers’ movement, and resistance in general — a political prostration rooted in the fatal limits of both reformism and syndicalism. The declaration at the end of the assembly, proposed by a member of the most radical BASE unions, indicates this. The assembly’s 12-point programme of demands represents a root-and-branch challenge to the government's assault on the popular masses as a whole.

The assembly called for an immediate mobilisation for a two-day strike on 7-8 June, in defence of Article 18 (legislation which provides protection against arbitrary dismissal). The assembly also called for occupations, marches, and simultaneous mass assemblies to further develop and widen the scope of resistance. The united front of the Italian working class is struggling to be born.

If it succeeds, we may witness very soon dramatic and powerful evidence of it, not only in Italy but as the catalyst for change elsewhere.

• Italian earthquake report here

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