The August 23 2007 Bruno Trentin died in Rome later and as a result of the after-effects of a fall on a bicycle while spending a few days of vacation in a Dolomite location like San Candido that he loved so much. Although elderly (he was born on December 9, 1926) Bruno had not given up on that sporting life which had led him for many decades to climb mountains to test his stamina and his determination to achieve even in terms of physical rigor ever more ambitious goals. Anyone who has read his Diaries – published posthumously in recent years – has found in them not only reflections on current political and trade union affairs of the time, but also considerations on the books he was reading and stories of the climbs undertaken with a few selected friends, with whom pleasantly share the effort as conversation and company in the few moments of leisure and rest.
Trentino he was born in France (in Pavie in Gascony) where his father Silvio had gone into exile after being one of the few university professors to refuse to swear allegiance to fascism. When the regime fell, the young Bruno had returned to his homeland (together with his father who died shortly after) and had participated in the Resistance, in the formations of Justice and Freedom. After the war, after graduating in law from Padua, he had completed a period of study in the USA, at Harvard. Having landed in the CGIL he had given prestige to the Research Office. In 1950 he joined the PCI. He had been elected deputy, a post from which he resigned when the incompatibility between trade union offices and elected mandates was decided. Then in 1962 he had replaced Luciano Lama to the management of Fiom where he remained until 1977 when he became part of the confederal secretariat and later became general secretary from 1986 to 1994.
Released from the union, he was elected, for two terms, European Parliament. Trentin is the author (often together with Bruno Ugolini) of very important essays on the subject of work. But the legend of him is written together with that of Pierre Carniti and Giorgio Benvenuto (the only survivor) in the glorious decade of the metalworkers (precisely 1963-1973) when the three trade federations innovated industrial relations, enshrined in the contracts contents of great cultural significance and promoted a reunification strategy that came one step away from success, but which was forced to fall back, up to today's scandalous situation where plausible reasons cannot be seen for the existence of three "historical" confederations which continue to remain separate, each in its own little garden of power. To remember Bruno Trentin on the anniversary of his death, I have chosen to publish some excerpts from a speech that was important to him (and to all of us).
On 13 September 2002, the Ca' Foscari University awarded Bruno Trentin an honorary degree in Economics. On that occasion Trentin pronounced a Lectio doctoralis on the theme ''Work and knowledge''. Bruno then he was still a member of the European Parliament (it will be until 2004); therefore he certainly had opportunities after that to give other important speeches in various places. As Giorgio Bocca wrote, ''when someone like him speaks, one understands that hard critical rethinking and creative research belong to all those who want to get away from clichés and laziness''. On that occasion, however, Bruno spoke in the hall dedicated to his father Silvio, one of the founders of administrative law. There lectio – also for its contents – certainly represented a mature and in-depth synthesis of the experiences, studies and thoughts of an entire life. Trentin measured himself, in advance, with the major issues that would affect the trade union debate.
Work flexibility, above all. ''The flexible use of new technologies, the resulting change in the relationship between production and the market, the frequency of the rate of innovation and the rapid aging of technologies and skills, the need to compensate them with innovation and knowledge , the responsibility of the executive work to guarantee the quality of the results – according to Trentin – will, in fact, make the work itself, at least in the most innovative activities, the first factor of company competitiveness''. However, it is good to distinguish – this was the recommendation – work flexibility as an ideology and work flexibility as a reality. The introduction of new information and communication technologies, with the changes in the relationship between supply and demand deriving from their increasingly flexible and adaptable use, the speed and frequency of innovation processes, with the consequent obsolescence of knowledge and skills, undoubtedly imposed, as an imperative linked to the efficiency of the company, a flexible use of the workforce and a great adaptability of work to the incessant processes of restructuring, which tended to become no longer a pathology but a physiology of the company modern. Another crucial issue (almost twenty years have passed since then) concerned the demographic question.
''The population is aging rapidly in Europe and particularly in Italy. In 2004 – he wrote – the age group of 55-65 years will surpass, in quantity, the age group of 15-25 years. And significant problems were beginning to arise both to guarantee the health and assistance of the longest-living people and to guarantee a decent income for retirees. Therefore – he continued – the only way, difficult but feasible, lay in the increase of the working population, able to finance the welfare State. But this - he observed critically - was stops in Italy at 50% of the total populationand, against 72-75% of the Nordic countries. Such an effort certainly entailed an increase in female employment and increasingly qualified immigration. But, even then, the promotion of an active aging of the population seemed inescapable to Trentin, with a voluntary but incentivized increase in the employment of older workers and therefore in the retirement age.
And this was the perspective for him, with the progressive disappearance of the old-age pension. Until that moment, workers over 55 were in fact employed in Italy to the extent of only 35% against 70% in the Scandinavian countries. The increase in the active population also for older workers therefore appeared as the only alternative to the reduction of universal pension protection. The writer does not intend to contrast Trentin's words with those of today's trade unionists. He would be rude to Bruno, first of all. But perhaps they would do well to go and read that again lectio of 2002.
