White smoke, Pope, the king is dead, long live the king… the reader can choose the phrase to hail the re-election of Maurizio Landini as head of the CGIL. Why these formulas? To describe well the state of the current union struggle.
PdAC trade union department, Italy
It is already serious that a union invites any head of government to its congress, who as such is an enemy of the working class, but the largest Italian union has invited the “president” Meloni to the box, that is, the most reactionary face of bourgeois politics, which he should clearly oppose because of his inverse Robin Hood politics, which is to take from the poor in order to give to the rich.
It is a practice, we explained… Prime Ministers have always been invited. Meloni’s yes is welcome: it serves to demonstrate that the CGIL is an interlocutor of the Palace, even in times of the most reactionary right. And why did Meloni accept? To prove, she says, that she is worthy of her position, even in the face of the most distant union parties. In short, legitimacy and approval are reciprocal. But she will bring home the best gain: while the CGIL leadership shows its complicit and concerted face, Meloni and the parties that support her government bring home a legitimacy in the eyes of the workers, which, added to the continuous class betrayals of the center-left and the reformist left, explains the electoral successes of the right.
Also invited to the same box was the so-called government opposition, the “leftists” and pentastellati [Movimiento 5 Strelas] –from Schlein to Conte to Calenda– that led Meloni to victory, essentially launching liberal recipes similar to those of this government, without a true dichotomy between the parties. Calenda answers, calls those who dispute him sheep, just to make clear how important the base is for these political-union bureaucrats…
While the protest against the presence of Meloni by the minority of the CGIL led by Eliana Como, who leaves the room with her clenched fist raised to the sound of the song “Bella Ciao”, is being staged in the room, placing stuffed animals in their seats, symbol of the “Cutro State Massacre”, she mockingly ironized from the box, discrediting and challenging that feeling of indignation common to so many workers. A protest, it must be said, purely for the media, therefore insipid compared to what would have been necessary: the delegates to the CGIL congress should have taken the example of the French workers who are on extreme strike and are occupying the factories, threatening to overthrow Macron and his entire government with kicks in the rear if he doesn’t leave alone…
A presence, that of Meloni, which should have outraged the women present in the room above all: “the president” Meloni, who never stops claiming macho and homobitransphobic positions, is the demonstration that it is useless to have women in charge if these women are conservative and do not work to improve the status of women, which has always been an indicator of the evolution or backwardness of society.
Giorgia Meloni speaks in front of an audience made up mostly of union officials and leaders – who listen in rigorous silence. There is even weak applause when the prime minister mentions the “ignoble” attack on the CGIL headquarters in Rome by the “extreme right”… as if she had never had anything to do with Casa Pound, Forza Nuova or similar milieus. .
He continues: “We thought that the time for fierce ideological confrontation had passed,” he said, “but in recent months it seems to me that the signs of a return to political violence are becoming more frequent.” These words should immediately make the CGIL tremble, as they reveal the repressive intent towards future workers’ struggles, but none of the union bureaucrats felt a chill down their spine…
“The President” rejects the entire union line on unemployment, starvation wages and basic income tax reform. From the box the following words are heard: «With this presence, I think we can try to celebrate national unity. Unity is not about annulling the opposition that has a positive and educational role for the community”: thus, it is like annulling years of class struggle by passing off unity as something that can go hand in hand with the opposing opposition…
At the end of the Sicilian puppet script, the top leader Landini enters the scene, announcing that he is “even” available for a general strike together with the CISL and the UIL… the same CISL that, instead of demonstrating with the CGIL and the UIL in the last national strike –even though, it must be said, it was a facade strike that they were forced to proclaim given the push of the combative base, more to weaken their forces than anything else–, he took to the streets a few days later at the government side. Let us add that, for now, the prospect of a general strike seems very distant…
In short, the base is always further away from the union leaders; the base that guarantees them the position they hold, but which is permanently betrayed.
Meloni appeared like a colossus because he vindicated his war on the poor and, in a somewhat veiled way, let his message be understood, that is: either the union does what its government says or it is useless since the government does not change its trajectory… surely of itself because the delegates were docile in listening to it, almost as when the leaders sit at the negotiating tables.
After this absurd spectacle, the workers and workers only have one way to improve their condition: the only way is that of the class struggle that can lead to a real change of the economic and social system prevailing until now, and remembering the words Gramsci: “When you argue with an adversary, try to put yourself in his place. You will understand him better and perhaps you will end up realizing that he is a little, or a lot, right. I followed this advice of the wise for some time. But the clothes of my opponents were so dirty that I concluded: it is better to be unfair sometimes than to try this shit that makes you faint again.
Article published in www.partitodialternativacomunista.org, 3/22/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.