The Workers' Statute is a socialist treasure: let's defend it with our vote

Exactly 55 years ago, on May 20, 1970, the Workers' Statute was approved. It is said that referendums that aim to repeal regulations that affect the world of work are an opportunity for revenge or a rethinking of the economic policies produced by the Democratic Party in its recent government experience. On a strictly political level, the referendum had as its main objective the repeal of the law on differentiated autonomy and therefore would have been configured as a sort of popular pronouncement on the actions of the current government.

But that question has been quashed. However, the referendum is still valid because the government has entrenched itself with an appeal to desert the polls , not only as a tactical expedient to win it, but as a form of intolerance towards the expression of democratic vote; something that represents more than an obstacle to its action, in the preparatory phase to the "democratura" that we are experiencing and that intends to consolidate in Italy as is already happening elsewhere. It is therefore appropriate to concentrate at least on the merit of the reasons for which there is a retroactive desire to affect a provision, - we are talking about article 18 of the Workers' Statute - which has undergone adjustments and supersedings over time and whose repeal remains one of the less noble pages in the government parable of the left that governed our country in the Second Republic.

Let's be clear, everything changes, everything can be revised, every achievement can and must be questioned in the face of changes in Italian society. In fact, it was said then, at the time of launching the Jobs Act , that the approved changes to the Statute would see the very copyists of the Statute ( Gino Giugni ) in the front row. However, it is right to tell a bit of history. The Statute was the fruit of a long and tiring parliamentary march in which more than one obstacle had to be overcome and which sanctioned and significantly qualified the action of the Socialists in government for the first time. The entry of the Socialists into government caused a fracture in the world of work and in the left. The determined action of the PSI represented in a plastic way the political meaning of the reason of reformism opposed to the late-maximalist retreat of the PCI. And in fact the PCI abstained in the vote on the Statute in Parliament, and in the PSIUP (ally of the PCI) there were even peaks of refusal symbolized by the contrary vote of Vittorio Foa.

Now, when the social parties, jointly, deploy their strength and argue that the rules introduced by the repeal of Article 18 weaken and do not strengthen workers' defenses, they must be taken seriously. When in 1985, with an economic policy maneuver, three contingency points were frozen from the paycheck, the battle in the union and among the forces of the left was so bitter and excessive that it forced the same forces in the field, which had fought each other, to find with enthusiasm a unitary recomposition; because never as the division of the world of work represents a democratic wound. But at the time it was a discussion in which two different economic policy lines were facing each other; it is difficult, with hindsight, not to evaluate that that maneuver brought real benefits to the country's economy, contributing to a drastic reduction in inflation.

But never and under no circumstances were consolidated conquests for the world of work, for the left and for Italian democracy called into question. Instead, the prerogatives of the Workers' Statute should be considered such, which today as then represents one of the most advanced instruments to guarantee, in an economic democracy now overwhelmed by the vehement force of unregulated capitalism , a bulwark founded on principles and values ​​that if abandoned would put the world of work at the mercy of the arbitrary exclusive prevalence of economic reasons. On a political level, we can consider the action of the CGIL to be late, excessively hinged on an internal corporis discussion in the Italian left, which has become something very different from the representative force expressed by the mass parties of the time, namely the Communist Party and the Socialist Party.

But if the foundations for a modern left are to be rebuilt, they cannot completely sever the link with their own history; and only those who did not know it or who thought it was an antique could fail to realize the damage that is done by violating the Workers' Statute . The limits of the reforming action of the modern union certainly cannot be corrected through a defeat of the union. The union remains an essential subject for the integration of political and social systems without which everything is up for discussion starting with Democracy. Capturing this essence to express a referendum choice is not a whim of nostalgia, but being very clear about the pitfalls that are hidden behind the changes of these months and a papal encyclical, an intellectual invective or the rites of tired nomenclatures will certainly not be enough to shake up a people exhausted by these continuous tears operated on the supporting foundations of the difficult, patient conquest of Italian democracy.

FROM

Bobo Craxi