Reject the separate contract for metalworkers
Mobilize the factories for a referendum on the agreement
Support grassroots demonstrations and self-organized strikes
Just 6 days after the 9th October general strike called by the FIOM, which saw the participation of hundreds of thousands of workers all over the country, striking against the crisis and against the new regulations on bargaining separately agreed between the CISL-UIL-UGL unions and the employers' federation, Confindustria, the response from Federmeccanica together with the CISL and the UIL has all the features of an employer-union lockout with three precise objectives:
- to stop in its tracks the renewed militancy within the working class and one of its organizations that is currently taking a more conflictual, representative stance;
- to confirm once again that the costs of the crisis are being dumped onto wages, jobs and the lives of the workers;
- to begin the dismantlement of the national bargaining system by category, beginning with the most combative, resistant sector.
The agreement includes an average annual pay increase of €112. The first instalment of €28 will be paid in January 2010, the second - €40 - in 2011 and the third - €42 - in 2012. Nothing more than a tip, figures much closer to those proposed by Federmeccanica than the unions'. Indeed, as the employers had asked, the first instalment of the raise will be smaller than the others. And not only that, it is only 5th-level workers who will be getting €28 - workers at 3rd level will only see a €15 or €16 net increase. And another 1.3 million metalworkers (working in small companies) will receive the grand sum of €15 a month from 1st January 2011 to make up for the fact that they are not entitled to bargain separately with their employers.
Although the CISL and UIL metalworkers' unions represent only a minority, they have forced the situation with the support of their respective federations in an act which makes a mockery of union democracy, destroys the unity of the workers by offering a few miserly euro now, and puts the seal on the new fusion of interests between the bosses on the one hand and those unions who act as local controllers of the workforce on the other. Control which is exercised with bargaining and bilateral bodies, with wage-support funds and collaboration in productivity increases, and with the surrender of any form of protection against casualization and flexibility.
The words of approval from the minister for labour only serves to complete the triangle of interests - bosses, government and collaborationist unions - whose aim is to strip the national bargaining system of all hint of solidarity, unity and democracy, destroying the very bases of working-class organization in the workplace and in the community.
At this time, it is necessary to support all forms of grassroots worker democracy in the factories that express dissent, protest and the will to reject an agreement signed above their heads.
It is necessary to create the conditions for a referendum of workers, even a self-organized one, which can shift the ratio of power, removing support from the unions that signed this agreement and restoring faith in the workers' voice in the national bargaining process.
The future of labour democracy is at stake. The very existence of an autonomous working class, with its designs for a freer, more equal, more solid and more participatory society, is in danger.
As usual, anarchist communists will be in the forefront of the defence of the workers' interests, supporting combative, libertarian union practices.
Labour Commission
Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici16 October 2009