A-Infos (en) Italy: FdCA COuncil of Delegates statement: The new bargaining system: the official birth of the market union [it]

The so-called reform of the bargaining system and the agrement between industry associations, the 
government and the CISL, UIL and UGL unions comes during an extremely difficult moment, socially 
and politically, for the workers' movement because of the economic crisis. ---- Apart from making 
life extremely difficult for millions of workers and pensioners, the economica crisis is a time 
when the power relations between capital and labour are redefined. The real weakening of rights and 
wages that this agreement will introduce is an integral part of capital's policy in dealing with 
the crisis. ---- This agreement opens the way to a new form of representation, based on the central 
role that the union organizations will acquire as managers of the agreement with strong involvement 
in the dynamics of the market: an authoritarian response which will severely limit participation 
and union autonomy.

The reduced role of collective bargaining and the national labour contract, which by the way will 
no longer be able to protect and strengthen wages against real inflation, is capital's answer to 
the crisis: reduce pay without risking anything.

The periods of truce provided for by the agreement are nothing more than a masked attempt to limit 
the right to strike and the inevitable response that the workers and the people will provide to the 
damaging, barbarous policies of capital; the ability to revise collectively-agreed national 
contracts negatively will tie the workers to market values as mere merchandise; and even when 
collective bargaining itself within a single workplace is possible, the agreement ensures that the 
profitability of the company takes precedence over the workers.

The bilateral committees provided for in the agreement will serve to enable a mafia-like - and thus 
unequal - system of assistance, which will be totally unbalanced and go against the real interests 
of the worker, producing the deleterious rise of a caste of charity professionals.

The emergence of an authoritarian policy aimed at redefining the rules of collective bargaining 
finds in the CGIL the last hope of the workers to oppose this project; the schizophrenic policies 
of the Democratic Party will not be enough to ensure a return to the partnership fold of certain 
important areas of this union confederation. The 13th February strike called by the CGIL's 
metalworkers (FIOM) and public sector workers (FP-CGIL) is the only chance for renewed impetus to 
the struggle. This new situation that has emerged is also forcing the still too-silent world of 
grassroots syndicalism to join the battle in a united way, with none of the typical inter-union 
competitiveness.

We are thus entering a new phase in which this agreement will have to be overturned, category by 
category, workplace by workplace.

They are trying to eliminate social conflict! Instead they will have to face more conflict, enough 
to defeat their plan to make the workers pay for their crisis.


71st Council of Delegates
FEDERAZIONE DEI COMUNISTI ANARCHICI

Pesaro, 25 January 2009


http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen


From: Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici <internazionale@fdca.it>




_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en