WORKER TURMOIL IN ITALY

...The rank and file's challenge to the union hierarchy quickly produced some positive results...

...The union hierarchies, recognizing the significance of the movement, organized councils in the factories where they had not already come into being, and within a year the councils were established as the official workers' organizations at the shop level...

...The factory councils have barely been able to keep up with daily battles over the shifting of workers from plant to plant, speed-ups with the introduction of new machinery, and threatened layoffs...

...But the Communist leadership also acknowledged that it made too many concessions to the Cristian Democrats...

...The Communist-dominated CGIL bears the brunt of much of this criticism...

...In November, the leadership of the CGIL began a process of frank self-criticism during its General Council meeting...

...The Christian Democratic Party dominated the government, the major banks, and most lending institutions...

...The process of bureaucratization probably began soon after the unions won their major contract victories of the early 1970s...

...Moreover, the FLM leadership was divided over the workweek question...

...Many of the financially strong enterprises are channeling their profits into foreign investments...

...At about the same time, factory council elections at two Alfa Romeo plants in Milan set off a shock wave...

...Moreover, workers have often found themselves in the position of protesting government measures, such as price increases, that have the support of the traditional working-class parties, the Communists and Socialists...

...Frustrated by the impotent union hierarchies and low pay, these young workers rebelled, and from 1960 to 1963 a wave of strikes swept through the factories...

...It also implies that the working class must give up at least some of what it won after 1969...

...So the union movement had been revitalized, and the political circumstances seemed auspicious for beginning to implement the workers' demands...

...At other plants, the workweek would be from thirty-eight to thirty-six hours depending on the category...

...The delegates represent the members of a specific work team...

...With respect to the controversial proposal for reduction of the workweek, the emphasis is on creation of new jobs, especially in the South...

...It seems justified, therefore, to regard the contents of the FLM document, as well as the process by which it was approved, as a victory for the Italian working class...

...These are some of the suggestions for a new labor strategy under discussion in Italy today...

...These victories dramatically altered the power relationship between management and labor within the plants...

...About 50 per cent of all industry was at least partially state-financed and controlled...

...The unions are now beginning the difficult job of developing an alternative strategy...

...That same month, the metalworkers' union — Italy's largest and most radical — revealed its first draft proposal for a new contract and caught almost everyone (including the three union confederations) off guard: The union demanded a reduction of the workweek from forty hours to thirty-six — and an increase in pay...

...Without the industrial zone councils, Trentin fears, the workers' movement may isolate itself within the factory walls...

...The leadership admitted it had lost contact with the members and conceded that growing bureaucratization was shackling the unions...

...But the labor movement realized that if it were to gain still more control over the conditions of production, it would have to acquire some influence over what was being produced...

...union local...

...It is the largest of the union confederations, and many of its high-ranking leaders — who are also Communists — have adhered closely to the policies of their Party...

...The workers had the formal right to participate in investment decisions, but they could not even find out who, within the labyrinth of political interest groups, banks, and foreign investment corporations, actually reigned over the capital of a given enterprise...

...The fundamental problem for the workers was lack of political power...

...As the council delegates began to enforce the provisions of the new contracts, their functions took on a routine quality...

...They are not obliged to belong to a union, and all work team members — unionized or not — vote for the delegate...

...They also brought their factional disputes...

...How did it happen...

...These policies have forced the labor movement into a defensive position since 1975...

...Capitalists have responded to the recent crisis by refusing to reinvest in many weakened enterprises and by shutting down entire operations in cases where the workers would not permit layoffs...

...The party militants and union activists who dominated the factory councils tended to bring the political perspectives and policy lines of their parties or confederations into the workplace...

...However, the strikes were quickly checked when the manufacturers clamped down with layoffs and a new push for increased productivity...

...They are increasingly aware that they must influence and change the current policies of the Communist and Socialist parties and formulate concrete demands that chip away at the structures of the capitalist political economy...

...Whatever the outcome, the workers face a difficult period, given the long-term crisis of international capitalism, which weighs heavily on such a weak member of the system as Italy...

...It was increasingly apparent to workers that their parties were no longer supporting them...

...The fundamental principle is that of rank-and-file democracy: all workers have a voice within the council...

...There is a provision for special negotiations on hiring young people and on labor mobility...

...And the International Monetary Fund bolstered the austerity campaign by demanding that Italy cut its balance-of-payments and budget deficits and reduce public spending and the cost of labor...

...Initiatives for mass mobilization and contract negotiations had been blocked by the tense political dealings at the national level...

...Italian delegates spent about twelve hours a day on the shop floor handling everything from an incorrect paycheck to complaints about a malfunctioning machine...

...Even today, it is difficult for management to lay off workers...

...The Communist and Socialist parties alleged that the workers were not union members, or belonged to independent (non-confederation) unions...

...The next logical step was a demand for control over investment decisions and product choices...

...After twenty-five years of Christian Democratic mismanagement and corruption, many Italians were open to change and began to look to the Communist Party...

...The resolution of the current government crisis, the upcoming elections for the European Parliament, the national congress of the Communist Party to be held this spring, and the elaboration of the government's three-year economic program will all affect the political climate in Italy...

...By the mid-1970s, the workers in many large factories had won some of that control on paper, but implementing this part of the contract proved to be nearly impossible...

...At the same time, a gradual process of industrial restructuring has been taking place...

...Few new jobs have been created for several years...

...These councils could deal more effectively with such problems as unemployment, industrial restructuring and conversion, and investments that affect an entire area and not just a single plant...

...Italians now refer to the event as the svolta di EUR — the EUR turning point...

...Planned investments and new jobs never materialized...

...Average wages would rise by 30,000 lire (about $35) a month...

...the workers face a difficult period, given the long-term crisis of international capitalism' In the final document, the FLM condemns Italy's entry into the new European Monetary System, arguing that to link Italy's currency to stronger European currencies will force the Italian government to impose severe deflationary measures, including rigid wage ceilings...

...Increasingly, those willing to accept these duties were union activists and militants of the various political parties...

...The basic principle that almost everyone supports is autonomy for the workers' movement — independence from political institutions and parties...

...A day after that charge appeared, newspapers published photographs of thousands of demonstrating hospital strikers waving their union confederation cards...

...In some cases, production is being shipped out of Italy altogether...

...There were three major causes: first, a process of bureaucratization within the factory councils and the unions...

...The contract promises to defend the cost-of-living escalator mechanism for all workers, and asks that the salaries of public employes be readjusted for inflation every four months, as are those of industrial workers...

...The regular workweek for southern metalworkers in plants affiliated with northern factories would drop from forty to thirty-six hours by 1980...

...In many large enterprises, management is transferring phases of the production process to small plants where the unions are weak or nonexistent...

...correspondent for II Manifesto, an Italian daily, and has written on Italian politics for a number ofpublications...

...Even some leftists who supported the proposal questioned the "top-down" way it had been presented...

...Ultimately, both the Communist Party and the CGIL decided to support the contract proposal...

...The economic crisis hit Italy with full force in 1975, although the Italian economy had been stagnating since 1963...

...For months there had been reports that factory council delegates were resigning and turning in their union cards to protest against national union policies...

...Confronted with management's offensive and a rapidly changing economic situation, the unions have found it difficult to conceive, let alone put into effect, comprehensive plans for a new model of economic development...

...The Communist Party's economic strategy — its conception of how to pull Italy out of the current crisis — also created problems for the union movement...

...But the Socialists and two of the labor confederations also balked, and the Communists accused the metalworkers of selfish betrayal of national union policy...

...That Italy's industrialists should condemn the demand was not surprising...

...Why have the workers and their supposed representation grown so far apart...

...Workers said they wanted new delegates who were more closely tied to the rank and file...

...Many Italian leftists, including workers and unionists, contend this strategy is at odds with both the elaboration of a new model of development and the achievement of working-class control over the economy...

...To get through all the necessary work, a kind of division of labor defined the functions and positions of the delegates within the council...

...But the vague language left the platform open to various interpretations, and the divided union leadership was not able to make coherent proposals to the government...

...Even Luciano Lama, secretary general of the CGIL, who had led the campaign for salary containment and increased labor mobility, admitted to having pushed his call for workers' sacrifices too far...

...Workers in several large plants began to meet in factory-wide assemblies, elect delegates, and form factory councils...

...After 1976, the Party concentrated most of its energies on working out a formal political accord at the national level with the Christian Democrats...

...Youth unemployment has become a major social and political problem...

...New technology involving a higher degree of automation is appearing on the shop floors...

...In the June 1975 local elections, the Communists won 32.4 per cent of the vote, and a year later they climbed even higher in the parliamentary elections, attaining 34.4 per cent...

...The "left opposition" within the unions, which accounts for about 20 per cent of the bureaucracy, opposed the platform, but proponents were able to win majority support, since the platform was worded vaguely and did include the by now pro forma demands for social control over investment...

...The draft also asserts that workers have a right to information on all management production plans, employment structures of their companies, decentralization plans involving other factories, industrial conversion, the use of public funds, investments abroad, hiring practices, health and safety conditions, and technological innovations...

...second, the economic crisis beginning in the mid-1970s and Italian capital's response to it, and, finally, the political impasse created by the policies of the Italian Communist Party...

...to small plants where the unions are weak or nonexistent' the beginning between the factory council delegates and their work teams has obviously deteriorated...

...Italian workers have learned that it does not suffice to have theoretical control over investment decisions, and that their interests will not necessarily be met by having working-class parties in the parliamentary majority, or even in the cabinet...

...At the end of the decade, the workers mounted another series of struggles — this time focusing on the organization of the labor system, including demands for a greater voice in the production process and a more democratic and responsive union structure...

...The final draft was drawn up democratically in a process that unified the organization and began to bridge the gap between the rank and file and the leadership...

...In consequence, both rank-and-file unity within the factory and the fragile unity still being developed among the three union confederations suffered...

...While this revitalization of the Italian unions was taking place, workers were also winning considerable control over the organization of the production process in the factories, over the pace of work, and over hiring and firing policies...

...The unions ended up being caught between government and party policies on the one hand and an increasingly frustrated rank and file on the other...

...In retrospect, many workers now believe they turned over too much decision-making power and council-union work to the delegates...

...The wildcat strike spread swiftly, and by the end of the month had shut down hospitals all over Italy...

...When worker representatives approved a final draft paragraph by paragraph at a national meeting in Bari last December, the spirit was one of militant solidarity...

...But the achievement of militancy and political consciousness carries its own weight, and the events that began to unfold in the fall of 1978 may mark the beginning of a new era for the Italian workers'movement...

...Bruno Trentin, an important leftist leader of the metalworkers' union, who became a secretary of the CGIL in 1977, contends that one of the first objectives should be creation of industrial zone councils — democratic, representative worker bodies that cover a geographical area in which various enterprises are located...

...The government chipped away at the national cost-of-living escalator mechanism which protects most Italian workers from inflation...

...But by 1978, the factory councils, the unions, and the labor movement in general faced the most serious crisis they had experienced since the mid-1960s...

...Most of Italy's national labor leaders now admit that they gave up too much of the union movement's political autonomy to the political parties...

...The metalworks industries are, of course, doing all they can to postpone negotiations and to weaken the contract, and it is most unlikely that the FLM will obtain all of its demands...

...Control of production decisions implied the need for economic planning at the national level, but the Christian Democrats were not about to institute a system of rational planning designed to benefit the working class...

...At that time, the presence of the unions in Italian workplaces was generally weak...

...It was one of a series of labor eruptions last fall that foreshadowed Italy's current political crisis, yet it may mean the rebirth of the Italian labor movement's leading role in economic and political life...

...Growing awareness of these obstacles coincided with a general push for reform in Italian society...

...The result was that the workers' movement stalled until finally, last fall, various sectors of the rank and file said basla — enough...

...The anti-communist, anti-union campaign of the Italian ruling class had succeeded in purging or silencing leftists in the factories The unions themselves — esi^ecially the Communist-dominated General Confederation of Labor (('GIL) — had alienated many of their members by failing to respond to their needs at the shop level...

...production...

...The causes of this widening rift between rank-and-file workers and their union and political leadership can be traced to the mid-1950s...

...Fiat, for example, now has an almost completely automated department at its Rivalta plant in Turin, where "robots" do welding on a car chassis that circles along a specially wired floor...

...In any event, the workers' movement was seriously weakened...

...But as worker assemblies in every factory debated and modified the contract proposal, and as the potential of the reduced workweek came to be understood, the rifts within the FLM began to mend and the union regained some of the unity, political consciousness, and mass participation it had lost in recent years...

...Government-controlled prices were allowed to rise on basic food commodities, energy, public transportation, and medicine...

...By the early 1960s, hundreds of thousands of young workers had migrated from the rural South to take their places in an alien world of fast, rigidly disciplined assembly lines in the industrial northern cities...

...Most CGIL leaders criticized the vagueness of the EUR platform and the ambiguity of union policy...

...But the draffs political significance and its expression of class consciousness are impressive...

...At a February 1978 conference in the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR), a suburb of Rome, the unions adopted a new platform that called on workers to limit salary demands and accept greater labor mobility as the price to be paid for the creation of new jobs...

...In the council elections, delegates closely identified with political parties — especially with the Com munist Party — were defeated...

...Joanne Barkan is a journalist who lived in Italy for several years and returned there last autumn to gather material for this article...

...There is an important distinction between an Italian factory council and a U.S...

...While management pursues this restructuring process, the Christian Democratic government, with the acquiescence of the Communists and Socialists, began imposing a national austerity program...

...And to facilitate those negotiations, the Party did not insist on a program of economic reforms and ended up allowing the Christian Democrats a free rein in determining economic policy...

...Many workers were willing to delegate political and decision-making responsibilities — and the long hours of work they required — to their representatives...

...It sees the economy as a whole and focuses on two fundamental issues — employment in general and particularly in the South...

...When the platform was announced last October, the entire country, including the union's rank and file, was somewhat taken aback by the demand for reduced working hours...

...In some instances, workers have kept production going in the occupied factories...

...To a great extent, the workers took charge of productivity standards as well as health and safety conditions...

...She is the U.S...

...Management is also trying to shift workers from one plant to another in an effort to rationalize the use of labor...

...But at least one specific proposal which meets many of the general criteria has already been put on the bargaining table: The metalworkers' (FLM) platform draft calling for a shorter workweek is now a formal contract proposal...

...Although the Communist leadership continued to pay lip service to the need for a new model of development, day-by-day policy decisions conformed, for the most part, to the exigencies of the present system — holding down the cost of labor, maintaining "peace" inside the factories, and increasing labor mobility (laying off workers or shifting them from factory to factory) in an effort to create conditions favorable to a new cycle of capital investment which, in turn, will supposedly create jobs...

...In 1976, the Christian Democrats could no longer form a parliamentary majority and a cabinet without the assent of the Communists...

...The close relationship that existed at '. . . management is transferring...

...A layoff announcement usually triggers a strike, and a planned factory shutdown often is met by occupation of the plant...

...When the Communists pulled out of the parliamentary majority last January, they blamed the Christian Democrats for blocking reforms...