“On the morning of December 2, there was a freezing wind that cut the face. One of those days of north wind and clear light that are not uncommon in Roman winters. Two hundred thousand workers, unemployed, young people took part in the demonstration. A peaceful and democratic showdown. Some of the autonomous provocations were controlled without difficulty and everything went without incident. In Piazza S. Giovanni I spoke for the FLM and Carniti for the confederations. The metalworkers had won another challenge. The first to recognize it were those who had not hidden perplexities or disagreements. Napolitano called me at home in the middle of the night to congratulate me on my success. The day after L'Unità headlined: "An immense working force"».
So wrote the former general secretary of Fiom Pio Galli, on page. 176 of his memoir Da una parte solo. He was referring to the demonstration of 2 December 1977, promoted by the FLM, the then unitary federation of metalworkers, practically against the recovery policies of the government of national solidarity, strongly desired and supported by the PCI. The following day, beyond the headline that appeared in L'Unità, on the front page of La Repubblica, an unforgettable cartoon appeared, much more truthful by Giorgio Forattini, where the leader of the PCI, Enrico Berlinguer, was represented, combed and pomaded, wearing a elegant dressing gown and a silk scarf around his neck, intent on pouring himself a tea, observing, with astonishment, the closed window from which came the noises of the processions. But then everything was interwoven with greater diplomacy.
Galli recalled the "perplexities or dissents" that had preceded and accompanied the "challenge" of the metalworkers and immediately - with elegance - referred to the night phone call from Giorgio Napolitano - then number 2 of the party and the staunchest supporter of the political line of national solidarity (we also noticed it in his most recent acts as President of the Republic) - who complimented the success of the demonstration which, albeit grudgingly, the PCI of the time could not ignore. It does not appear that on the evening of last October 25, Matteo Renzi made a similar phone call to Susanna Camusso, returning from the kermesse in Piazza San Giovanni. And the next day, at the Leopolda, the secretary - premier reiterated - in firm tones - his dissent against that way of "being on the left".
Back in 1977 between the political left and the trade union left there was a tactical divergence towards a particular political phase and the "Sacrifices" it required, but at the bottom there was a strategic unity around shared values. Now, the issues of the Jobs Act Poletti 2.0 and the stability bill are only casus belli, almost pretexts, for a "challenge" on the left which, from latent, has become open; because to divide the people who recognize themselves in the CGIL and those who found themselves at the Leopolda there are now a different system of values and a different vision of the present and the future. To separate the "two worlds" of the gauche there are not only the words that the leaders pronounced from the rostrum: Susanna Camusso who rattles off all the paraphernalia of a musty tradition, up to the saving evocation (almost an act of faith) of the strike general; Matteo Renzi who hits the heart of the "creed" of the opponents by stating that the request for a permanent job belongs to the past.
Beyond the respective "embarrassments", it is the reactions of those who participated in the two events that make an impression: the demonstrators on Saturday who criticize the premier with the same insulting epithets once addressed to Silvio Berlusconi; the Leopolda audience that springs to its feet at every jab with which their leader stabs the CGIL. After all, grasping the critical points of what was once the "common house of the left" is like shooting at the Red Cross. The attempt to respond to Renzi's considerations (who had accused the union of insensitivity towards precarious workers) was pathetic by inviting some young people to the stage in Piazza San Giovanni to explain their difficult integration into the labor market.
Knowing the leader of the CGIL as a person of experience, culture and intelligence, we must confess that we would not have expected such an instrumental slide. If it is silly, in fact, to claim that it is only the union that prevents those changes in the way of organizing work and working when everything else has changed profoundly (in the context of the globalization of the economy), it is equally silly (and a little ' dishonest) to attribute to the laws (which, like all human acts, can always be wrong and perfectible) of having created for them those realities which, instead, they have only tried to regulate. Atypical relationships, protagonists of work flexibility, are not only in force in Italy, but throughout Europe and more generally in the developed world; and represent an attempt to give concrete answers to work situations no longer attributable to that open-ended contract that had been at the center of the Ptolemaic labor system, characterized by protected markets, customs tariffs, competitive devaluations, a strong state deficit in the economy … and freedom of dismissal.
It was no coincidence that article 2118 of the civil code - the one which governed the dismissal ad nutum, subject only to the obligation to give notice within the prescribed terms - applied in particular to the permanent employment contract which did not create problems of any kind precisely because the withdrawal was free. Truly, Susanna Camusso thinks that those flexible working relationships that have invaded labor law legislation everywhere (even in countries where the protection against unjustified dismissal is only compensatory) are the result of a liberal wave, which, like an evil virus , has subjugated the Parliaments of the most important industrialized countries, strong in traditions of extensive social protection and heavy and meticulous welfare systems? Do you really believe that it would have been enough not to enact those "bastard" laws as a whole and to live happily and stably, assisted by the union, by article 18 and by whatever else was a comfort to our small ancient world?
We remind Susanna Camusso and the CGIL of what Marco Biagi wrote in the 2001 White Book: «The changes that are taking place in the organization of work and the growing drive towards enhancing the individual's abilities are transforming the employment relationship. This leads to experimented new forms of regulation, making possible regulatory arrangements that effectively conform to the interests of the individual worker and to the specific expectations placed on him by the employer, in the context of adequate social control». But the left - unable to guarantee a minimum of adequate "social control" - does not give up presenting illusory solutions, all centered on contrasting the "accursed norms" of the most recent labor legislation.
And it is a way of lying to young people, because it was precisely those measures that allowed - before the crisis and in correspondence with modest increases in GDP - eight years of uninterrupted growth in employment, the results of which have not been completely erased, despite the bloodlettings of recent times.
