Only the street union can restore dignity to work

The democratic dimension of the vertical union of the Seventies has been abandoned and this, as Pio Galli and Trentin argued, inevitably led to a bureaucratic institutional drift of the Italian union movement that precipitated, without a real discussion on those issues, in the Nineties. All this happened, moreover, in a context that required a renewed conflictual capacity.

It would be desirable to have a parallel reflection on what organizational tools are available to support even prolonged conflicts, a reflection that was also only touched upon at the time and immediately set aside, perhaps because the belief had spread that conflict would always be available and at most to be governed. In a world where work has become fragmented and impoverished, this is obviously not the case, but precisely because it is not the case, conflict, starting from the success of strikes, was and remains an irreplaceable instrument of normal union action. Putting defeats aside, not carefully investigating their underlying reasons, is never a good thing for building recovery. Reflection on the referendum defeat can therefore become the opportunity for a longer-term assessment and, therefore, aimed at building a strategic dimension that is also long-term.

There is certainly a need for a major initiative, largely already underway, on the wage issue and on an adequate renewal of category contracts , but together it is necessary to reflect on how the political and cultural crisis of the councils leads us to design in a different way from the past the very identification of the essential subjects for the construction of that street union whose possibility and necessity the referendum campaign itself has shown us. Trentin will try to recover that history of democracy in 1993 with the protocol of 23 July by inserting the unitary union representatives elected by the workers into the Italian union model. But they will succeed in establishing themselves only in the public sectors thanks to the great intelligence of Massimo D'Antona who will build the law that still regulates representation and therefore industrial relations in that world basing them on democracy, on the election of delegates as an essential component. In the private sector, the spread of elected representatives has known different histories for many reasons – starting from power relations – but certainly today the question of the application of a democratic model starting from article 39 of the Constitution is a priority. Moreover, the fracture between trade union organizations can only be resolved in the democratic dimension of voting. Bringing work back to political participation requires a greater capacity to represent it in its fragmentation associated with a renewed democratic culture and practice.

In the 1970s, when workers saw their wages and their ability to control working conditions increase through their struggles, the councils represented the strongest guarantee for union unity and the close link between national bargaining conducted by the categories and decentralized bargaining in the workplace, on working hours and pace, and on safety. Winning workers were also the point of reference for major political and cultural battles and major reforms. The national health system, the single basic school system – enriched, among other things, by the physical presence of workers through the 150-hour day – the Basaglia law itself that closed mental hospitals, had in the workers and the councils a solid political point of reference. And it was in that period that people began to think about area councils, as a way to unify a broader front around the working class, aimed at improving life and political participation, in their own territory, in their own municipality, in their own neighborhood. In many places, in Reggio Emilia, as Landini recalls in his autobiographical book, but also in Genoa and other industrial areas, workers negotiated with companies so that 1% of their wages would be allocated to public investments for the benefit of the entire population, especially the poorest and most marginalized. To create and make more welcoming nurseries, libraries, schools, and health facilities.

The economic crisis and the crisis of the production model, the long cycle of financialization and austerity, which caused a decline in wages and a weakening of the political weight of the union, also led to the crisis of the councils, and to their progressive closing in on defense. From 1% of the wage bill for social investments, we moved to factory welfare, starting with health care, as compensation for the progressive inability of wages to guarantee a dignified life. Protecting oneself and one's living conditions became the imperative of the phase. And when one defends oneself, the different is often experienced as a potential enemy. The lack of participation of a significant part of stable workers in the referendum vote tells us that we are still in this phase. Overcoming it means acting on two fronts. One is the commitment to contract renewals that first of all prevent wages from falling behind inflation – that thing that makes it increasingly difficult to make ends meet – and to the achievement of a work organization based on spaces for professional recognition, participation in the production process and autonomy, therefore freedom.

The other is to assume the awareness that the fundamental and central subjects for the construction of the street union can no longer be the same as before, that it is necessary to strengthen the horizontal level of the Chambers of Labor and adopt a method that enhances network action to the advantage of collective action in the workplace where workers with different contracts coexist, often in conflict with each other, and with a different system of protections and guarantees. The value chain is lengthening and puts different subjects to work, from contracting firms to an induced that often fragments up to individual self-employment, to the so-called self-entrepreneurs, but who carry out - to use an expression by Massimo d'Antona - a job that is instrumental to the economic activity of others. To represent them, to make them become subjects aware of their role and with some say in their destiny, it is not enough to coordinate the categories to which they belong at that moment, but it will be necessary to think of site delegates - be it the factory, or a logistics center, a hospital or a university - and of the supply chain - logistics and agri-food - who find their place and their coordination in the labor chambers. Among other things, it is this horizontal dimension that can feed with greater force the same vertical of the categories. If in the Seventies it was from the victories in the factory that one started to invest in the territory, today the street and the territorial union is the starting point for the same revitalization of the conflict in the workplace and of a new season of councils.

The street union, to respond to the questions that arise from young people, from those who massively participated in the referendum, cannot have a purely labor dimension. It must try to respond to the questions that those who mobilize for peace and to combat global warming address to the world of work. From those who claim the right to housing as well as the right to health. We must re-appropriate the indications that arose from the extraordinary meeting in the Vatican between the 5,000 delegates of the CGIL with Pope Francis who with Laudato Sì traced the path of a strategy capable of holding together pacifism, environmental justice and social justice. A vision that was at the center of the large demonstration in San Giovanni on “the main road”. But the commitment to peace and the environment implies a strong change in the way of doing union work. If previously the idea of ​​control could be limited to dealing with production processes, and asserting the will of workers, their health and safety needs, their very intelligence, compared to a company that thought it could unilaterally decide the times and rhythms of work, today control, if it wants to be an element of a battle for peace and for the environment, must also concern the product, not only the how but also the why and for whom it is produced.

After all, almost a century ago, a liberal philosopher like John Dewey said that what distinguished slave labor from free labor was whether or not one knew the purpose and utility of one's work. And in the territory, and not only in national politics, alternative employment options must be found and the necessary training activities must be set in motion, to move from the production of weapons and goods that destroy the territory and the environment, to productions oriented toward the well-being and well-being of people. All this is necessary and possible. Necessary, because if our country, if Europe, is still slow to implement an ecological transition in our way of producing and living, we would be outside of what is today the beating heart of productive and system innovation in the world, unless the world wants to resign itself to its own end. Possible, because, as many examples at a territorial level already demonstrate, it is possible to plan the growth of good work, for its effects and its quality, in the face of the need to reduce or abandon productions that are harmful to the environment and life.

And it is at street level that today we can address the issues that weigh most heavily on the lives of people who work in so many different ways. The issue of housing costs and the cost of health care weigh decisively on workers' income today. They determine how the salary gives the possibility of making it to the end of the month or not. Work is poor also for these reasons. In health care, it is also necessary to think about the choices of the past and measure their congruence with the present. In health care, for example, we have all given in in recent years to the ideology that saw the company as the organizational model that would solve the problem of costs and bureaucracy. And we have too calmly accepted that we would move from Local Health Units to Health Companies . To then discover that within the logic of the company, behind the numbers, people were progressively disappearing, and that they were weakening, to the point of almost zeroing out prevention activities in the territory and in the workplace. The Usl were also born from the struggles for health in the workplace, from the extraordinary alliance of workers' councils with the intelligence of men like Maccacaro and of many young doctors who decided to become occupational doctors, to carry out a social service, in the factory and in the territory, to defend the health and well-being of people there.

In the company, prevention has almost disappeared. And the people who go to factories and construction sites not only to inspect the responsibility for the misfortunes that happen, but to prevent them, evaluating with the workers what are the causes that are at the origin of those now daily misfortunes, have disappeared. With the referendum we had indicated in subcontracting a decisive cause . And it is true, but with territorial bargaining we must do more, to restart the alliance between the workers' representatives and the system that governs our health, in the workplace and in the territory, regarding prevention. The necessary prevention is not only that of the early analysis of the disease to cure it in time - which by the way does not happen - but above all that of drastically reducing the causes of illnesses and accidents at work. And this was the fundamental task for which occupational doctors were born. And to reflect at a national level, us and politics, whether the corporatization of health was from this point of view a sensible choice.

The street union is in short an unavoidable choice, but very complex, that requires timely checks of national policies and of the political and organizational configuration of the union on the territory in the relationship with the categories. A job that the union must do internally through careful reflection that values ​​the limits and results of the referendum experience but also externally in the comparison with that vast associative world that has been at our side in the mobilizations for peace and for the environment but above all with the thousands and thousands of new activists protagonists of the referendum campaign. The labor chambers must be the place where naturally the associations and territorial committees, the subjects that fight for the right to housing on the territory, and those that give life to energy communities, confront the union. And in the internal areas, and not only, the young farmers who alone or in association are committed to organic and as much as possible zero-mile agriculture and discover new job opportunities there too. And the young people who invent work in the protection of cultural heritage, and the many who engage in volunteer work, for whom it is necessary to enhance their skills and promote their rights, because it is senseless to continue to consider productive work only that done for the market of goods, and to leave in the shadow the work that is done to alleviate the misery of the human race, and which contributes to the reduction of misery and poverty. And to bring to the territory the fight that we should do for the minimum wage, but also by resuming the political discussion and the initiative for a real citizen's income.

The street union as a return to the original labor chambers, where the unemployed, blue overalls and black jackets, women who worked from home – the same as many computer workers who provide data to the Artificial Intelligence centers do today –, teachers who wanted to teach those who needed it and workers who wanted to learn, came together to question the exploitation of labor and inequalities. Trentin and before him Di Vittorio reminded us that precisely this horizontal nature of the original union in our country was the basis for overcoming trade unionism, and for building the various industrial unions to move toward a model of solidarity rooted in the workplace as well as in the territory. In changed conditions, we believe that this is also true today.

*Di Vittorio Foundation

END ( The first part was published in Unità on June 21st )