The ship sinks and the government lets it sink to get the applause. More or less this is the meaning of the broadside that came against the Lega-M5S government from the metalworkers' demonstration in Milan.
“The Government in this permanent electoral campaign is doing a bit like Schettino: it approaches the cliff to get applause but is it sinking the ship?”. It was Marco Bentivogli, Fim-Cisl secretary who launched the first lunge from Milan.
The union has called for today, Friday 14 June, an eight-hour strike and three simultaneous demonstrations in Milan, Florence and Naples, promoted by Fiom-Cgil, Fim-Cisl and Uilm-Uil, to ask the government and businesses to put work, industry, wages, rights at the centre. “Future for industry” is the slogan that accompanies the squares.
The unitary mobilization of metalworkers started in Rome on 9 February and it is expected that it will end on 22 June in Reggio Calabria, for the South. The general picture of the industry, on the other hand, is certainly not rosy: apart from the drop in production recorded in April by Istat, company crises are multiplying. Latest in order of time that of Whirlpool in Naples and the Cigs to the ex Ilva in Taranto: according to FIM calculations, the number of workers at risk "ranges from 80.000 to 280.000". A worrying number that will need to be monitored on the basis of the outcome of the various open and ongoing disputes.
The unions start from the request for the relaunch of public and private investments and support for employment: issues which, they insist, must be put back at the center of the political agenda. They denounce "the lack of any idea of industrial policy" in the country, which is becoming a territory conquered by multinationals with the consequence, they warn, that Italy is losing its manufacturing wealth. And they are demanding more health and safety at work.
The general secretaries of the CGIL Maurizio Landini and of the FIM Marco Bentivogli are present at the demonstration in Milan; in Florence the general secretaries of Cisl Annamaria Furlan and Uilm Rocco Palombella; in Naples the general secretaries of Uil Carmelo Barbagallo and Fiom Francesca Re David. A strike was also proclaimed for Saturday by the independent trade union Fismic-Confsal, to ask for a change in the government's economic policy that "be more attentive to the issues of employment and economic development", with two demonstrations: in Turin for the regions of the north and in Melfi (Potenza) for the central-southern regions.
