Seventy years ago, March 29, 1955 in Turin, for the first time, the CGIL was suddenly put in a minority in the elections for the internal Commissions of the Fiat, losing not only the absolute majority of votes, but also the primacy within the most important Italian factory. The votes for the Fiom-Cgil list collapsed from 65% to 36%; the Fim-Cisl rose from 25% to 41% (shortly after, however, the Sida split took place); the Uilm-Uil from 10% to 23%. defeat it was certainly determined by the climate of despotism and blackmail established at Fiat and in many other companies (in the Turin factory there was even the case of a worker being fired with the explicit motivation of "because he was a communist" which also caused much discussion on a legal level).
And it wasn't propaganda: at the Congress of February 1956, the CGIL denounced that 674 members of internal commissions, 1.128 activists and thousands of workers had been fired during the previous year, guilty of having supported the positions of the union. Joseph DiVittorio, then leader of the Cgil understood that even the harshest of repressions did not justify such a clear and unexpected defeat. On the suggestion of Vittorio Foa, Di Vittorio sends to Turin a young researcher who will be talked about a lot in the years to come: Bruno Trentino, the future general secretary of Fiom and then of Cgil, who edited a report, in collaboration with the leaders of the Turin Chamber of Labour, which was decisive in changing the strategy of Cgil and the orientation of the union leadership, placing the problems related to condizioni and the • innovative business organization based on the use of technologies and digitalization of internal and external processes, as well as the active and continued promotion of the services we offer through business development, marketing and communication systems (letter "I" of our logo actually stands for "Innovation"); of the work.
Changes in the Cgil leadership
Di Vittorio changed the management team; rejoice the communist John Roveda and the socialist From Motta, he had it appointed immediately Victory Foa ed Agostino Short story, as new secretaries of the Fiom. Then Di Vittorio himself in the "historic" meeting of the Cgil's Executive Committee on 26 April led a courageous analysis denouncing the intimidations, reprisals and dismissals that had annihilated the working class (since 1952 the Cgil had demanded the approval of a Workers' Statute precisely in an anti-discriminatory vein). But in addition to these elements - which also had weight - the leader of the Cgil - obviously these were not personal elaborations, but the fruit of a heated debate within the leadership group - questioned himself on the Fiom's mistakes and on its detachment from the reality of the factories which were becoming increasingly modern and characterised by specificities not taken into account by inter-confederal and national category bargaining.
A timely warning and the failure of a short-sighted trade union policy
It is worth remembering his passwords, pronounced seventy years ago, but of a disconcerting modernity, because, mutatis mutandis, they are still valid today, in the presence of the great transformation that is coming: «Technical progress and the growing monopolistic concentration of the means of production, continually accentuate these differences, determining extremely differentiated living and working conditions among various groups of workers even within the same company. The fact that the Cgil – Di Vittorio continued – underestimating this process of differentiation, has continued in recent years to limit its wage activity almost exclusively to national category and general negotiations, has been a serious mistake […]. The objective situation forces us – he concluded – to make the factory, the company, the center of wage policy». Back then, words had weight. Admitting ex cathedra to having made a «serious mistake» took hundreds of executives by surprise (when it would have been much simpler and less disruptive to take it out, as usual, on the bosses and the government, as it is doing now Landini). In an interview by Vittorio Foa published on essay by Andrea Stuppini “Socialist revisionism” (Mondoperaio 1981), the great trade unionist denounces a way of carrying out a mistaken trade union policy in connection with a policy tout court that is also fallacious, as will emerge in 1956 with the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
“So, in my opinion, there really was the idea that change comes from outside, it comes from the East, and that therefore the condemnation of the East meant the condemnation of change. The process of transformation came, but it came slowly. The process of de-Stalinization, however, entails an important consequence: the renewal of the analysis of capitalism. If at a certain point I stop seeing capitalism as eternally in crisis, eternally on the brink of collapse and catastrophe, needing only either a decisive blow to definitively overthrow it or crutches to keep walking, if at a certain point I see that capitalism is walking and developing, a kind of fear arises in those who have always said that capitalism was in bad shape, that recognizing that they are good and know how to make it, entails accepting what capitalism actually was”.
The Left's Failure to Understand the "Economic Miracle"
In essence, in those years the political and trade union left, had not understood those processes of growth and development that took the name of "economic miracle". lack of sensitivity compared to the royals phenomenon with the development: the transition from fascist autarchy to the opening of economic and commercial exchanges, the strong expansion of manufacturing industry in the industrial triangle, forced urbanization concentrated in the large northern metropolises, accentuation of the economic-social dualism between advanced areas and backward areas, between North and South, prevented the left from freeing itself from the old prejudices of "ragged capitalism" and from expressing a correct evaluation of the role of the State. The essay also contains a quote from Riccardo Lombardi which could refer to today's Cgil. "I remember - Lombardi says - a visit of mine and Silvio Leonardi at the Chamber of Labor of Milan whose economic commission had prepared an analysis of the situation presented in catastrophic terms. When we left the meeting Leonardi said to me: but don't they look around, don't they see factories and houses being built? The truth is that a development, however disorderly you want, was there and was transforming the country". A sincere testimony that paints the picture of an era, as given by Riccardo Lombardi; one of the few exceptions, especially in the socialist camp, in a general picture of conformism and superficiality".
Overcoming Dogmatism: The Future of the Labor Movement
And he added Foa in a article su Mondoperaio: “grave is the mistake of the friends, of the comrades, who deride the “new” as a propagandistic invention of the monopolies, and accuse the “innovative” comrades of playing the game of the dominant groups. The truth is the opposite. It is precisely the dogmatists, the fossils of the workers’ movement, blind to the new operational material of the dominant group and its instrument of action, it is precisely these conservatives who contribute to the new workers’ reformism, to the birth of workers’ aristocracies “integrated” in the employers’ policy, to the growing difficulties of the popular masses. The liquidation of dogmatism is today an absolute condition for effectively fighting the employers’ power.”
