Pierre Carniti has died. The historic CISL secretary would have turned 82 on 25 September. He had led the Cisl from 1979 to 1985, in the season of great trade union achievements, of confrontation with no holds barred and strikes with Confindustria and of the "triple union", as the triad CGIL-CISL-UIL, which represented the workers, was then called. Pci, Dc, Psi and lay people. Leading the confederal trade unions – those on the grassroots or on the right were absolutely marginal – were personalities of the caliber of Luciano Lama, Pierre Carniti precisely and Giorgio Benvenuto.
If Luciano Lama ruled the largest of the three confederations, strong in the factories, with a sanguine but still reformist attitude - as he demonstrated in the terrible season of terrorism -, Pierre Carniti led the union closest to the Catholic world, to the public administration and to the services but strong even in industry, so much so that Carniti himself had been the leader of the metalworkers (Fim-Cisl) in the hot autumn. A great supporter of union union, Carniti was however the secretary of the rift between Cisl and CGIL when he sided with his confederation in favor of the abolition of the escalator and against the referendum supported by the CGIL. A fracture that cost him a lot and that led him to leave the general secretariat of the CISL in the hands of Franco Marini in February 1985.
Carniti was also a European parliamentarian for two legislatures, from 1989 to 1999, and a senator, elected with the PSI, in 1993 and 1994. Also for this reason, as soon as the news spread Palazzo Madama, where interventions were underway in view of the vote of confidence in the Conte government, he dedicated a minute of silence to him.
“It is a moment of pain and mourning for the Cisl and for the entire Italian trade union movement. Pierre was a point of reference for the workers, a moral and political guide. A trade unionist who marked an era. He leaves a huge void ”, declared the CISL secretary Annamaria Furlan. “A just man has died, a great trade unionist always capable of innovating, a friend of the workers, an intellectual end. Despite the differences, we have looked to him as a point of reference. He leaves a huge void ”, the CGIL secretary recalled Susanna Camusso.
“The news of the death of Pierre Carniti leaves a great void in all of us – commented Fim Cisl secretary general, Marco Bentivogli – Pierre was among the greatest trade unionists in our country. He was a great innovator, often going against the trend of the common thinking of those years, he fought for the affirmation of company bargaining and was the main protagonist of incomes policy and of the 1984 Valentine's Agreement. He was a European parliamentarian and a man of great rectitude and intellectual honesty. A man capable of arousing passions and promoting values around the organization of workers, his example remains an irreplaceable reference for the Fim. The courage to dare more substantial democracy and to restore value to work are like yesterday trajectories of trade union work that Pierre taught us all".
