Rimini, Rimini...

The CGIL is heading towards its congress in the midst of an economic and social situation in deep crisis, where the policies of recent years have favoured businesses, and allowed a direct attack on the rights of workers. It has chosen to encourage development at the cost of cuts in wages and public spending, lowering labour costs. Because at this stage labour and workers are only considered as a cost!

In these conditions, the CGIL is trying to give labour a central role in the economic and productive development of the country and is doing so with a 10-point document which, though it does include some novel aspects, is far from enough to defend and win rights for the working class as it remains tied to neo-partnership policies that have repeatedly failed to impress.

After 12 years of partnership, where workers have lost out on their rights and on their ability to counteract neo-liberalist policies which have led the market to become the central focus of the economy and have therefore monetized the world of labour, where profit always comes at the expense of workers' rights, work conditions and wages.

It can, however, be said that this congress, thanks to two amendments regarding bargaining policies and union democracy, and the formation of a new current, will see the emergence of a contradiction within the CGIL. On the one hand, the objective of promoting the democratic dialectic needed to ensure a pluralistic running of the union; on the other hand, the objective of creating the possibility for members, delegates and labour clubs to act more freely on a local level in grassroots, conflictual campaigns. And it is this latter approach that is favoured by anarchist and libertarian workers within the CGIL. It is vital that the struggle against partnership be continued in order to return to a more conflictual approach to bargaining, which can relaunch the workers' movement, to get back to offensive demands for wages and rights instead of today's defensive demands. It is equally vital to return the worker to a central role within the union, to increase union democracy.

However, we must point out the limits of the 10-point plan and promote our own ideas and our own methods, emphasising that Anarchist Communists too work within the CGIL, holding firm to their positions of criticism of the union which, despite a certain amount of internal debate, still maintains a favourable stance towards partnership.

Just think of the fact that none of the 10 points question the type of struggles to be undertaken.

A union which does not talk about the forms of struggle which directly involve the workers is a union which does not want to struggle, a union which is ready to go into partnership.

We anarchists and libertarians must combat the concentrating of power within the union and develop organization from below, we must promote a workers' movement which will be able to free itself from bureaucracies and return to syndicalism with a fighting spirit, with libertarian practices, with more solidarity between workers and their struggles.

We must support the unity of the workers, common platforms which go beyond union loyalties, and return to the Union of Councils, as this is the only way we can honestly talk about union democracy - grassroots democracy - so that every member can elect and be elected, so that only those delegated by the workers themselves can represent the workers during every stage of the bargaining process.

The FdCA will continue to denounce and combat every case of a union management substituting the workers in the decision-making process. We will continue to play a part within the union organizations, encouraging workers to take back their rightful role within the unions.

FdCA Labour Commission

November 2005