FdCA National Secretariat

Statement on the Art.18 Referendum Results

The class struggle is no triumphal march. The history of the emancipation of the exploited is littered with advances and retreats. We are materialist and though we are guided by the revolutionary's genetic optimism, we are fully aware that the struggles that we work in through the movements and unions can either be successful or can be blocked for one reason or another. And the more these struggles aim to create democratic spaces, to increase wages for everyone, to extend political, social and labour rights to wider sectors of the working classes (especially in these days of growing job and wage insecurity), the harsher the response of the capitalists in order to defend their class interests.

It is in this knowledge that anarchist communists worked for a positive result in the referendum on the extension of Article 18 of the Workers' Statute [1]. It was a battle which sought to make the most of the power to effect changes which a referendum enjoys in order to bypass parliament and allow a further 6 million workers the benefit of the protection offered by Article 18. This would have created no end of problems for the Pact for Italy [2] and for its plans to suspend Art.18 protection for companies which in the future cross the threshold of 15 employees. 

Unfortunately, the FdCA was the only anarchist federation to declare its open support for this battle and to join the "Vote Yes" committees. Other areas of anarchism remained imprisoned in the trap of ideological abstentionism, in embarassing company, and were reduced to a confused form of politics which put them on the same level as Confindustria [3] and the government.

The answer given by the latter two together with a large part of the Ulivo [4] was a tough one: the blackmailing of employees in small companies, dire warnings of a jobs crisis, the brandishing of abstentionism, media disinformation and so on. They did not win, but they did stop the YES voters from winning. And the stakes were high. As they couldnt not limit themselves to a NO vote, they aimed to ensure that the quorum [5] would not be reached, thereby halting the spread of unions in small companies and derogating to parliament and parliament alone the power over the regulation of labour. They did not win, but they were able to block any change in power relations, which are in their favour at the moment.

And if we thought that 3 million people on the streets of Rome on 23rd March 2002 was a huge demonstration of social opposition to the government and a challenge to the centre-left, what are we supposed to think about the 11 million people who voted YES? Are they just victims of a perfidious year-old political joust between Bertinotti and Cofferati? [6] Are they just victims of the State and of that institutional mechanism that is the referendum? Or are they the demonstration today of the existence of vast sectors of the population who are willing to show their opposition to the government's policies and who are ready to go beyond the ambiguities of certain unions and certain centre-left parties? Are those 11 million people an expression of uselessness, or are they a sign that there is widespread awareness of the present struggle?

Now that the referendum is over we are back to where we were on 23rd March 2002: the proposed law No.848bis to modify Article 18 is still there, waiting to be approved by parliament. But now we know, one year on, that there are 8 million more of us. They did not let us win, but we are comforted by the fact that our work within the movements, the unions and the community will continue in order to promote social opposition, self-management of the struggle and the deisre for an alternative ... a libertarian alternative.

June 2003

FEDERAZIONE dei COMUNISTI ANARCHICI
National Secretariat

Notes:

[1] Article 18 provides for protection from unfair dismissal for workers in companies which have more than 15 employees and its absence in smaller companies is one of the main reasons for the poor union membership of these workers. Large companies are nowadays splitting into smaller ones, or "farming out" labour in order to avoid Art.18

[2] "Patto per Italia". A "partnership" agreement for cooperation between the government and the reformist unions.

[3] Italian industrial employers federation.

[4] Main centre-left coalition of parties.

[5] Italian referendums require a turnout of 50% plus 1 of all voters in order to be valid.

[6] Fausto Bertinotti, lider maximo of Rifondazione Comunista; Sergio Cofferati, ex-lider maximo of the CGIL and great white hope of the Left Democrats (DS).