Having wiped the floor with the major Italian unions over the Jobs Act, and blew away what passes for the "left" in his own party with a display of ruthless, cynical contempt for the niceties of bourgeois parliamentary procedure and the countries constitution, with the successful passage of his new and profoundly reactionary electoral law, the "Italicum", Matteo Renzi believed he could make it a hat-trick of victories with his latest bill to reform the countries decrepit and dilapidated educational system.
Of course he had every right to feel confident — his counterparts in the schools and university system were mainly the same unions he had already humiliated. And though he had announced last autumn the terms and principles of "la Buona Scuola" (the Good School), a reactionary confection to rationalise and streamline the system in its entirety, according to the poisonous and philistine prerogatives of business-privatisation, managers, payment on "merit" etc., the leaders of the major unions sat on their arses, or, even worse, proffered their own "alternatives" of how "merit" could be a collective rather than an individual competitive criteria of disciplining the workforce.
But not all the teachers unions, thankfully, were so supine! The Base, autonomous unions, COBAS, led by Piero Bernocchi have campaigned and organised relentlessly against the proposed Bill, not only among their fellow teachers, but among students of the universities and, crucially, among the parents and families of their pupils. They also struck in early spring, calling for a united front of all the unions if Renzi introduced his Bill in parliament.
Which he did. To be met with Bernocchi's call for an immediate walkout of his and the other unions on the 5 May. The militant and enthusiastic reaction from the vast majority of teachers was electric, with spontaneous mass assemblies demanding support for the call of the CoBaS leader and his union.
The pussyfooting gang of their bureaucratic leaders were caught on the hop, instinctively hostile to any solidarity with COBAS, but this time unable to mint the weasel words to worm out of the demands for action that by the minute threatened to engulf them and their grip on their members.
They supported the call and on the 5th Italy witnessed the largest and most militant day of action in the history of the education system. 70-80 % of the workforce came out, but it didn't stop there.. the participation in the mass assemblies that prepared for the strike was enormous in a rising tide of anger and determination, spilling over into similar assemblies and meetings with parents and other social and civil associations to explain the reasons for the action.
What has begun to take shape, perhaps already eclipsing it, has all the features of the mass teachers protests of the 80s when a rapidly spreading network of mass, democratic rank-and-file committees assumed the leadership of action in the teeth of opposition from unions determined to resist the threat of a growing politicisation of the whole movement.
Significantly the COBAS union of today was born in the throws of that specific struggle, as, too, its current leader as an emerging political syndicalist force on the Italian left.
From the 5 May onwards the tempo of events has continued to quicken as Renzi has decided to go for the jugular, introducing the Bill in parliament, and baiting the bureaucrats to go through with their rhetorical threats to boycott an end of term examination, mind numbing in its inanity and model of what La BUONA ScUOLA is all about. Only Berocchi has decided to defy him, announcing that his members will refuse to participate, eliciting the warning from one of the army of the country's commisioners of public order that the union members will – literally! - be drafted, another reflection of the history of shameful capitulation of the countries trade unions to the" good order" of bourgeois social peace.
The events of the 80s were the same thing, but along with the cowardly capitulation of the bureaucrats it also underlined the strength of the mass movement which as it continued to resist and spread forced the state and its judges to find a convenient formula that got them off the hook of a head on clash with the movement. That struggle ended in the late 80s with major victories for the teachers in terms of both conditions and salaries.
As strike action, protests and mass assemblies continue to spread, the attempt to criminalise the COBAS militants and the reaction to it not only among the teachers and forces involved with them in their crucial battle with the Renzi government could be the turning point in the decade. The long retreat of Italy's working masses before the criminal ferocity of a ruling class and its latest instrument of capitalist modernisation may be over.
