20/11/2014
Jorge del Palacio is a lecturer of political science in ICADE
On Tuesday November 11, Susanna Camusso, secretary-general of the CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro), announced the call for an eight-hour general strike next December 5th. The CGIL has justified the call for a strike in protest against the labour reform promoted by the Government of Matteo Renzi. The strike announcement thus culminates a process of gradual estrangement between the Partito Democratico and its historical ally, used to having, in the past, a harmonious coexistence between party and union.
The CGIL has 5,686,210 members (as of 2013) and is the largest union in Italy. However, the challenge launched against the Government of the PD has failed, so far, to create a union bloc capable of bringing together the two most important unions in the country against Renzi: CISL (Confederazione Italiana di Sindicati Lavoratori) and UIL (Unione Italiana del Lavoro). The former, of Christian-Democrat tradition, has 4,372,280 affiliates. The latter, with a social-democratic orientation, has 2,216,443 members.
The fact that the CISL and UIL have rejected to endorse the general strike called by Susanna Camusso's CGIL, plus their attunement with the reforms proposed by Renzi, is important because they show the unions the rift that the secretary-general of the PD has caused to the political life of the Italian left. Currently, the opposition to Renzi's labour reform is driven by the former leaders of the CPI (Partito Comunista Italiano) and the union of Communist origin. The latter has said the strike on December 5th has to be a day of mass mobilisation to show Renzi that no labour reform is possible in Italy without the support of the CGIL.
Clear in the memory of Italian syndicalism is March 23, 2002, a historic day, the date on which the CGIL was able to gather nearly three million people in the Circus Maximus in Rome against the government of 'Il Cavaliere' and his labour reform bill. It seems unlikely that such a mobilisation will happen again against a government of the PD, particularly if other union forces insist on not participating in the defiance to the government. Therefore, the challenge to the government that should show the strength of the CGIL may end, paradoxically, in the staging of the decline of the political power of the main Italian union. So far, the response of the PD has been ironic. As December 5 is Friday and Monday 8 is a holiday, the feast of the Immaculate, some members of the government have said that 'Il ponte è servito'.