In recent days I read on FIRSTonline an interesting article by Giorgio Giva on the events of July 1969 which marked, in practice, the beginning of warm autumn. Giva recalls the episodes of a widespread malaise that led to demonstrations and clashes with the forces of order, above all, in the capitals of the industrial triangle. Reading the article I appreciated it – I was there; incidentally I was elected to the national secretariat of the Fiom on July 27 of that year – the knowledge of the events and the assessments on the line of conduct of their protagonists.
The platform for claiming contract renewal was discussed and approved in the last days of July in Milan, first with separate demonstrations of each federation, then in a large unified assembly where not only the claim booklet was launched, but also a dispute and strike management plan which – as Giva recalled – sowed the seed from which the homogeneous group delegates and works councils blossomed.
The requests soon turned out to be disruptive: a salary increase of 75 lire per hour; normative equality between workers and employees; the reduction of working hours to 40 hours per week (within the period of validity of the contract) while leaving the salary unchanged. To these aspects was added a rich package of trade union rights: the meeting paid during working hours, permits, the headquarters, the withholding of union contributions in payroll and everything else that later found (in May 1970) a legislative outlet in the Workers' Statute.
After the death in July of the socialist Giacomo Brodolini, Carlo Donat Cattin, a former Cislino trade unionist, an imaginative and unscrupulous leader of the Christian Democrat current of Forze nuove, where the militants of the union then led by Bruno Storti, the leader who succeeded Pastore who had been its founder after the unitary CGIL split in 1948.
Being one of the few survivors of those events, it is my duty to remember the disappearance, in recent days, of Hugh Gregoretti, the director (already author of “Apollon” the story of an occupied Roman factory) that could be defined the Sergjej Eisenstein of warm autumn, having immortalized (can you say?) that glorious story in film”Contract“, on behalf of the metalworkers' federations and for the production of Unitelefilm.
Unfortunately, in the comments that recalled the Maestro's work, commitment and innovative ability (especially on TV), I did not find the space that film would have deserved. I remember that it was screened in public for the first time during an evening of the Fiom Congress in 1970. I noticed that Ugo Gregoretti was left alone at the presidency's desk to present his work. The director was very embarrassed having to speak to hundreds of people. And the union leaders had never had the opportunity to see a film in which they were protagonists.
Anyway, the screening was a triumph. "Contract“, Gregoretti's documentary film, traveled the length and breadth of Italy like a pilgrim Madonna. I think the director appreciated that sort of Oscar award given to him by the workers.
Also state television commissioned an external crew to follow the whole dispute. The negotiations took place under the cameras (other than the current streaming). Donat Cattin even let himself be filmed, in his study, during a confidential phone call to the Prime Minister, Mariano Rumor. Thousands of hours of recording came out of it (this material will probably be kept somewhere) from which some episodes broadcast in night delay were obtained, several months later.
