It is difficult not to share the bitter irony with which Prime Minister Matteo Renzi stigmatized today's strike by the unions against the school reform a few days ago, precisely at a time when this government, unlike those that preceded it,
does not cut resources for the school but wants to immediately hire something like 100 teachers to put an end to the shame of precariousness.
However, it is not surprising that the worst conservative resistance is raging precisely on the school, as previously on the Jobs Act, not only of the right but of the left which belongs to the CGIL school, whose populist, indifferent and anti-meritocratic positions have been the envy of the Cobas for years now and to the more corporate unions.
The interview that the general secretary of the CGIL, Susanna Camusso, gave yesterday to "La Repubblica" is a punctual confirmation of this with the usual nursery rhyme of clichés and superficial analyzes of a society and a country that we continue to see with the eyes of the past, and with the absolute poverty of alternative proposals. There are two words that in the vocabulary of all imaginary progressives but in reality stainless conservatives like Camusso sound like blasphemy and that the secretary of the CGIL is careful not to pronounce: meritocracy for schools and competitiveness for the growth of businesses and the 'economy.
Starting from these assumptions, of obtuse opposition to any real school reform and its relationship with society, it is not surprising that the line with which Camusso calls to strike is a mediocre collection of authentic highlights and guilty amnesias. But let's see in detail what are the unconvincing central points of the trade union counter-offensive which today finds its maximum expression in the most singular of strikes. A strike like Martians: against reform and against hiring.
1) RECRUITMENTS FOR MERIT OR TODOS CABALLEROS? It is not convincing that, faced with the obvious objection of those who point out that a union strike against the hiring of 100 new teachers has never been seen, the secretary of the CGIL is hiding behind two slippery arguments to say the least: that the The government "is not in a position to make the recruitments for the beginning of the new school year" and which has divided the temporary workers "in an arbitrary way".
First: to make recruitments quickly, the reform must be approved as soon as possible in Parliament on which more than a thousand amendments have already rained down in the Chamber: is it all the fault of the Government? In reality, there would be one way to speed up the hirings and that is to resort to the decree law: try the CGIL to convince the opposition (starting from the so-called left-wing ones with which it is more sympathetic) to ask for the decree to make the hirings effective immediately of teachers. If, as is probable, this does not happen, it will be legitimate to doubt that the real objective of the unions, and of the CGIL in the first place, is not to speed up the 100 recruitments in schools but that, legitimate but extraneous to the trade union nature, to bring down the Renzi government.
Second: the recruitment criteria envisaged by the Government are based on competitions and on the end of the chaos of rankings on the assumption that from now on, only those who serve will be hired in schools too. Are there more meritocratic criteria or is it thought that the best solution is that of the todos caballeros at the expense of the taxpayer and the quality of the school? For too long the school, like once the state holdings and still today many public companies, has been a factory of hidden unemployed people where hiring was done not because they served but to mitigate the drama of unemployment: the enormity of our public debt is there to remind us who pays and unfortunately who will pay in the future for fake medicines that are worse than the disease.
2) THE POWER OF THE PRINCIPALS. The trade union opposition to the strengthening of the principal's powers in schools is not convinced: one can discuss how to devise checks and balances of school democracy and the actual role of the principal, but since the days of the plethoric and bureaucratic collegiate bodies, it has not been entrusting the school to a semi-assembly management, often strongly conditioned by the basic unions, which improves its efficiency. It is not enough to indicate a school head if he is not granted real powers of guidance, even to choose the teachers to be called, without thereby infringing on anyone's constitutional rights. If anything, it would be interesting for the CGIL to ask a few substantive questions about the way school principals are trained and recruited, but the catacomb silence speaks volumes about this.
3) MASS OR ELITE SCHOOL? Finally, the thesis supported by Camusso according to which the reform would aim at an elitist school and not for everyone is not convincing. But is the strengthening of public schools for the elite or for the less well-off? "In the end - notes the secretary of the CGIL - those who belong to families who can afford it will access the school". Compulsory public schooling is notoriously free, but if the conditions for which all families can send their children to school are lacking, is the problem in the school or in the social degradation and economic poverty that lies ahead? In reality, as Roger Abravanel wrote in his new book "Recreation is over", the central problem today is not so much or just the right to study, but an education that meets the labor market and gives employment.
Allow a subdued final advice to the secretary of a trade union such as the CGIL which had among its predecessors characters such as Giuseppe Di Vittorio, Luciano Lama and Bruno Trentin who were at the antipodes of today's trade union conservatism: Mrs. Camusso, face all the opposition who believe in the Government, but come out of the mists of clichés and look for slightly more convincing arguments. Otherwise, don't be surprised by the irrelevance to which Italy's largest trade union is condemning itself. Nor of the fact that even among the workers the impatience of those who say that, after the old guard of politics, it would be time to scrap all the old guard of trade unions which by now only knows how to represent itself. And not always great.
