Once it was enough for the union to threaten a strike and the government trembled or fell. Today the union is splitting over the strike but the course of economic policy does not change one iota and the government goes straight on. After last Thursday's strike by the CGIL and UIL, the risk of political irrelevance and deep wounds in the Italian trade union movement is there for all to see. Naturally the union decline did not start yesterday but perhaps never as this time has a part of the union given the demonstration of being disconnected from the reality of the country and of not being fully aware that Italy - with the billions of the Next Generation Eu and with the reforms promised by the Draghi government - has a historic and unrepeatable opportunity ahead of it and the possibility of turning around and transforming the conspicuous 2021 GDP rebound into lasting growth and much higher than a telephone area code. But what are the origins of the crowding out of the majority of the union that make it "the weak link of Italian democracy"? According to an expert observer such as Gianfranco Borghini, former parliamentarian and head of industry for the PCI, there are mainly three: corporatism, populism and rebellion as an end in itself. But, as Borghini himself warns in this interview with FIRSTonline, the drift of the union or at least of the CGIL and UIL also has deleterious effects on politics, although the left does not seem to notice it. Let's hear how and why.
The secretary of the CISL, Sbarra, defined the general strike promoted on Thursday 16 December by the CGIL and UIL as "incomprehensible" and in fact it is difficult to understand if one considers that it took place against a government which is a model for all of Europe in its way to counter the pandemic, which practices an expansive economic policy, which has brought GDP growth (+6,3%) back to the levels of the economic miracle of the 50s and 60s and which has never stopped talking to the trade unions: someone has argued that the stubbornness with which the CGIL and UIL wanted the general strike is just a way of affirming their existence in a phase in which union action has touched and is still touching irrelevance. Could it be the right reading key?
No I do not think so. If so, it would be truly inexcusable. Instead, I fear that the managerial group of the CGIL and UIL (the two trade unions historically close to the left) have succumbed to the corporate and populist impulses that resurface, with increasing frequency, in the "people" of the left and which no longer find a levee in the groups union and party leaders. We thought that corporatism, populism and rebellion were a thing of the past, but that's not the case. Not only do they inspire the action of corporate unions (such as Cobas and similar) but today they also condition the choices of the large confederal organizations (with the sole exception of the Cisl) as well as those of the 5 Star Movement. It is a fact that should not be underestimated.
In the opinion of many observers, Italy has an unrepeatable turning point ahead of it, transforming the showy rebound in GDP in 2021 into a lasting phase of high growth, if it knows how to spend the resources of the Next Generation EU well and if it knows how to consequent reforms: unfortunately CGIL and UIL do not seem to realize the importance of this opportunity and, instead of helping the country to seize it, they give the impression of getting in the way. Do you agree with those who think that the indifference and lack of understanding of the historical moment that Italy is experiencing is the crux of the current trade union affair and partly also of the political one?
Yes, it is. There is not sufficient awareness of the risks that populism and corporatism pose for our democracy in the unions and in the parties of the left. Populism, with 32% of the votes given to the Five Stars, and the union corporatism that takes root more and more in schools and services, are not a ghost of the past (the terrible one after World War I that generated Fascism). Instead, they are the result of the very deep crisis of our political-institutional system which has now lasted for more than twenty years and which no one has been able to remedy up to now. This crisis has already overwhelmed the parties of the First Republic, of which only the ruins survive (such as the ruins of Ancient Rome) and today it attacks the union which thus becomes "the weak link in the chain of Italian democracy", the one that most easily it can give in to the lure of populism and corporatism. For this reason, Landini and Bombardieri's choice to proclaim a general strike in the midst of a pandemic and at the time of the country's maximum united effort to deal with it, should have created alarm in the Italian left which instead proved acquiescent if not downright supportive.
In the past phase of the greatest social and political importance of the trade union - that is, that of the 70s and 80s when, unlike today, it was enough to threaten a general strike to bring down a government - the strength of the trade union movement and in particular of the CGIL was that of reconciling the interests of workers with the general interests of the country while now, beyond the merits of the open questions on taxation and pensions, the impression that the protest of CGIL and UIL arouses is that their claims are experienced as independent variables from the general framework of the country, as happened in the past for wages in the CISL conception and which, as such, are inevitably destined not to find a ground of conciliation with the Government's line: do you agree?
It's not an impression, it's a fact. Landini's CGIL has changed its strategic axis and this fact, if not corrected, is destined to have very important consequences in the country. To understand this, it is necessary to take a step back. Two souls have always coexisted in the Italian union: the socialist-reformist one and the corporate-revolutionary one. What divided them, then as now, was the question of coherence between trade union demands and the general interest of the country: for the reformists the coherence between these two needs was the very condition for the affirmation of workers' rights, while for the corporatives and revolutionaries no. For the corporatives, the essential thing was that their demands were accepted regardless of the effects they would have had on the national economy, while for the revolutionaries, what really mattered was that their union initiative contributed to triggering a process of change system. In the first post-war period, the corporate and revolutionary components prevailed: the former led the union to defeat, while the latter favored (not always unconsciously) the advent of Fascism. It was only after the Second World War that the socialist-reformist component (thanks also to Togliatti's Salerno breakthrough) took the leadership of the CGIL firmly into its own hands, giving it, with Di Vittorio, a platform (the Work Plan) which made the union a of the driving forces of the economic rebirth, of the redemption of the working forces and of the rooting of democracy. From that moment the corporate and revolutionary components, while not disappearing, lost influence. From Di Vittorio to Novella, to Lama up to Trentin, the CGIL, with the UIL and the CISL, have positioned themselves on the terrain of the assumption by the union of a national responsibility. So it was with Lama's turnaround in the EUR in the 70s, and so it was, after the ominous parenthesis of the referendum on the escalator, which Lama didn't want, with the 92 agreements with the Amato government and of '93 with the Ciampi government. This line of union unity and the assumption of national responsibility has paid off for the workers and for the country and has allowed Italy to overcome economic and social crises certainly no less serious than the current one. A weakening of this approach in the CGIL was already manifested with Sergio Cofferati (with the story of article 18) and continued with Camusso, a non-existent Secretary General. But it is only with the rise of Landini that the change in the strategic axis of the CGIL has become evident. Landini, moreover, has never hidden his pan-union orientation. For him there are only the Union, Confindustria and the Government. These are the protagonists of the confrontation and it is only from the dialectic between these subjects that the choices of economic and social policy must arise (including the tax authorities which is a matter of exclusive parliamentary competence). Parliament, parties and other institutions do not fit into this framework. At best, they are ancillary. But the economic, social and institutional reforms that the country desperately needs to grow again claim Politics.
We come to the political aspects of trade union disorientation: does it not seem to you that from the phase of the CGIL as the driving belt of the PCI we have paradoxically arrived at the opposite phase of today, in which the maximalism and populism of the CGIL - which perhaps finds one of its worst expressions in the school with a trade union practice not very different from that of the Cobas and completely indifferent to the quality of teaching and the expectations of the students - they also inspire the current political action of the Democratic Party and Leu which, not by chance, run towards the embrace with the Five Stars and who were ready to do anything to defend a clearly inadequate government like Conte 2?
The pan-unionist view is a partial view which does not understand the complexity of the situation and does not help to manage it. Reforming the country, stimulating innovation, raising productivity are political challenges in the highest sense of the term. Technological innovation is the driver of development and it is also the only tool we have to manage the energy transition without creating social tragedies. The increase in productivity is the condition for the country to return to creating sufficient work and wealth to keep the debt under control. But this nexus: reforms, productivity and development, seems to completely escape the union. Reforms and innovation not only create work but change it, and this is the dynamic that the union of Landini and Bombardieri does not seem to understand and which instead has perfectly understood Marco Bentivogli to whom the CISL nomenclature has unfortunately preferred, as Secretary a humble official. Just as in the past we didn't want to grasp the link between wages and inflation, today we don't want to grasp the link between technological innovation and changes in the workplace.
Speaking of Conte, we must consider the fact that CGIL and UIL went on strike against the Draghi government and have never taken the field against the Conte governments as a coincidence or this is the litmus test of the populist disorientation of a large part of the union movement which is not certainly good news for the country?
No, it's not random. The Conte 1 government introduced Citizenship Income and Quota 100. Two measures that suited the union. The Conte 2 government has not initiated any reforms that could in any way create problems for the union. For this reason there was no conflict which there is today for the simple reason that Draghi has begun to change things, and this is what a conservative trade unionism fears the most.
