Maurizio Landini indicated in an interview the goal of a possible reconstruction of union unity. Today's trade union pluralism would have been born for political reasons after the war, but today the secretary of the CGIL does not even see a reason for belonging to a party that motivates the existence of different organizations. In truth, even before Fascism there was not only the CGL, but the white trade unions (the Cil), the anarcho-socialist USE and the equally revolutionary UIdL inspired by Alceste De Ambris were present.
Having said that, this proposal could prove to be one today for the head of the CGIL happy strategic intuition provided that some fundamental issues are addressed. It is true that at the state no relevant dividing elements can be glimpsed, at least between the CGIL, CISL and UIL. The substantial common attitude of the three large organizations in dealing with the consequences of the recent pandemic events would suggest that there is a broad common vision, so it would be easy to draw the consequences.
Perhaps this is not the case, but to better understand the state of things, a clearer would be needed comparison of the three organizations on contractual policies, on the policies of theoccupation and on welfare. Just as it will be necessary, in the implementation of the PNRR for the recovery and development of the country, a constructive approach of the social forces with the government of Mario Draghi.
Moreover, in the most difficult moments of our country, the union, from the hot autumn onwards, has never given up being a protagonist, assuming many responsibilities but always avoiding becoming irrelevant.
It is also true that organic unity would soon encounter another obvious obstacle that concerns today the difficulty (trivially called "armchairs") to redefine the structure of the equipment in the new unitary organization, from secretaries to functionaries. We must think that the organizational levels between categories and territorial structures in the state would be well over a hundred for each of the three confederations.
At the same time it should be remembered that the unitary project of the metalworkers in the 70 years had launched a solid joint transitional arrangement between Fim, Fiom and Uilm in view of organic unity. To tell the truth, this project stopped not due to organizational difficulties but due to the lack of political conditions.
Without compromising future prospects of organic unity, however, there is a model that can be achieved in a short time: that of building a solid "unity of rules" that goes beyond the CGIL, CISL and UIL, involves the entire world of work and in any case goes in the direction desired by Landini. We need to start from one of the most discussed topics: that of representation and the measurement of representativeness, which would also make it possible to circumscribe the phenomenon of "pirate" contracts.
That is, it is necessary to give implementation of Article 39 of the Constitution, which will probably only be applicable if only the first paragraph is kept alive ("Union organization is free") and the contracting social partners will be assigned the definition of the scope of application of the contracts, whether they are national collective agreements (such as the current category contracts) or company contracts (to understand the FCA type). It will then be the workers who elect the delegates, who coincide with the current RSU and who, as "big voters", will ratify it.
It would be just as consistent the modification of article 19 of Law 300 as proposed by Professor Maurizio Ballistreri, allowing all trade unions (and not just those signing the contract) to freely participate in the election of delegates, as provided for in the law for public employment. This would eliminate the misunderstanding generated by the combined provisions of article 39 between the national trade agreements, generated by the pre-existing corporate rules and the affirmation that trade union organization is free, which are two antithetical concepts that deny each other. On the contrary, transparent verification of representativeness and trade union freedom are two sides of the same coin.
