BY DICK NICHOLS
MILAN — Question: How can you tell when a general strike really is a general strike and not just the most organised parts of the working class taking a day off? Answer: When it's like the April 16 Italian general strike against the threat by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government to remove the unfair dismissal provisions of the Italian labour code (Article 18).
This wasn't a general strike just because the most left-leaning of Italy's three trade union confederations, the General Confederation of Italian Labour (CGIL), finally forced the other two, the Italian Confederation of Labour Unions (CSIL) and the Union of Italian Labour (UIL), to support the first all-out stoppage in 20 years — after two to three million workers turned up to the March 23 CGIL-called demonstration in Rome.
It wasn't because all the "extra-confederal" rank-and-file workers' organisations like the COBAS and SinCOBAS also turned out in force.
Nor was it because observance was 90% and above in the industrial heartlands of Milan, Turin and Reggio Emilia or even in the less unionised south, Sicily and Sardinia. Or because 400,000 turned up to rally in Florence, 300,000 in Turin, 300,000 in Bologna, 300,000 in Milan, 200,000 in Rome, 150,000 in Naples, 100,000 in Palermo or 50,000 in Cagliari.
It wasn't even a real general strike because all heavy industry, all forms of public transport, the public sector, media (with the exception of the most right-wing outlets) and major retail stores closed down for the day and energy usage fell 20%, almost to Sunday levels.
It was a general (and generalised) strike because it scooped up into activity unprecedented and even unlikely 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the working class on a scale that has not been seen in the last two decades. It was greater than the 1994 protests that overthrew the first Berlusconi government and greater than the 1984 strike wave against the dismantling of Italy's sliding scale of wages (scala mobile). As one unionist put it: "The piazzas are too small today."
Thirteen million people are estimated to have struck on April 16 — including the newest 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the working class, the most remote provincial towns, all age groups (especially young casual workers) and even many small family businesses.
In this sense the strike was more than about Article 18. It was a vast protest by all opposed to Berlusconi's Thatcherite social agenda. Particularly noteworthy were:
- Strikers on casual and part-time contracts (30% of the Italian work force) and from previously non-unionised workplaces.
- The involvement of clerical workers, of whom only a minority usually strike. At Fiat Mirafiori in Turin, for example, 50% of design and administration staff struck instead of the usual 10%.
- The thousands of factory council banners out in the squares, many dusted off for their first use in many a year.
- The closure of many business empires that rely on casual and unionised labour, like Ikea and the Italian chain Rinascente. The presence of workers from Berlusconi's own empire, Mediaset, also told of workers who were losing their fear of il cavaliere ("the knight" — Berlusconi's nickname).
- The mixture of all generations, enraged by Berlusconi's claim that in defending Article 18 mothers and fathers were taking jobs away from their sons and daughters.
One of the most notable new features of the strike, a feature already clear at March 23, was the participation of a new "yeast" in the working-class movement, the vast and variegated Italian movement against neo-liberal globalisation (the "movement of movements") organised in its various "social forums".
The social forums were a definite feature of many rallies and played a distinct role all around the peninsula. In Ancona the Marche Social Forum blockaded the port. In Padua the disobedienti plastered the local branch of the Israeli firm Iscar with banners condemning the slaughter at Jenin.
In Rome social forum activists, many of them high school students, blockaded main roads, including the entrance to the famous Cinecitto, where they were joined by metalworkers. At the end of the main rally, 20,000 marched to Rome's central station, where they carried out a symbolic occupation.
In Milan, after the main rally, the 10,000-strong "movement of movements" carried out a series of symbolic pickets against choice targets such as privatised electricity companies and casual employment agencies, beginning from Piazza Cordusio (renamed for the occasion "Thematic Piazza Against Speculation and for a Tobin Tax") and ending in Piazza Fontana (renamed "Piazza Palestina").
Noticeable too was the participation of many "ordinary workers" in a movement that has sunk deep roots into Italian political life.
So vast was the strike that not even the right-wing media could deny its success. Their line of counter-attack consisted of stressing that it was only about Article 18. This was a crude attempt to draw a line between the most conservative wings of the union movement and its more radical wings. The former has made it clear that if Berlusconi drops his attack on Article 18, everything else is negotiable.
Although clearly stunned by the strike, for the time being Berlusconi continues to pretend that the unions have a "restricted following" and to insist that "the government will nonetheless carry out its reforms and I will go down in history".
On the other hand, Berlusconi and his welfare minster, Roberto Maroni, have to at least talk about "dialogue" and are angling for negotiations over Article 18 to take place between the Confindustria employers' federation and the unions. In this way, any eventual deal between the bosses and the union leaders will look less like a defeat for the government.
One element in the movement's ongoing plan of resistance has already fallen into place — the formation between the radical left Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) and the centre-left Olive Tree coalition of an opposition parliamentary pact based on filibustering the proposed changes to Article 18 and launching a series of referenda on social, democratic and environmental issues.
However, out on the real battleground the mood is for driving the offensive forward. Already the national coordination of COBAS as well as individual CGIL-CSIL-UIL affiliates are looking for the answer to the question on the minds of millions: "Now what?"
In response to that pressure, and the continuing intransigence of the government, the CSIL and UIL leaderships are having to participate in the planning of CGIL-led strikes set for May.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 1, 2002.
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