A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria: Battles. Work less, work all, for equal pay. A GAME TO PLAY WELL (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The litany of the economic crisis constantly afflicts us, a crisis that from time 
to time has weighted and articulated explanations: the difficulties of China, the 
serious problems of the United States, a giant on the waning avenue, the recovery 
of the economy in the post pandemic that has triggered an inflationary spiral, 
Russia's treacherous war against Ukraine and the resulting energy and grain 
crisis, to name a few factors characterizing the global economy; if we then come 
to the Italian situation, we appeal to those phantom structural limits that would 
prevent finally lasting growth of the national company: lack of infrastructure, 
low productivity, low internal and external competitiveness. The data that are 
pitted at every opportunity, by Istat, Eurostat, the Bank of Italy and dozens of 
other institutes of various kinds and nature, certify this state of perennial 
crisis, except occasionally mentioning some indicator that in a few months , or 
quarter registers a positive sign, useful for raising morale. But the general 
picture returned is that of a situation that for decades now has been screwed up 
in a continuous state of difficulty, not to mention the previous and punctual 
crises of the capitalist system, studied by economists through the so-called 
cycles. However, this constancy, rather than identifying the market and 
capitalist economy - despite having favorable conditions such as cheap labor and 
unlimited use of natural and collective resources - is responsible for the 
failure and an intrinsic inability to respond to needs at times elements of the 
whole society, is presented as the result of the limitations of the potential 
that the market and capital would otherwise be able to release. Thus the emphasis 
placed on the crisis is transformed into a powerful tool for imposing substantial 
job precariousness - after time we start talking again about poor workers, forced 
to carry out more activities, not counting the many unemployed or inactive, as 
they are classified from statistics - in the name of an alleged national 
corporate interest. While on the contrary the huge inequalities certified even by 
institutions would represent a small inconvenience necessary for the circuit that 
ensures the well-being of the majority to start again. First investments and 
profits, then better wages and salaries, it is argued: an alleged economic law 
that has never been proven.

In this depressing picture in which axioms - growth, competitiveness, etc. - are 
taken for granted, even by those who should oppose them, mirages appear on the 
horizon from time to time that focus public attention and function as perfect 
distractors. A last one, which has been discussed for a few weeks, is that of the 
reduction of working hours for equal wages, in order to expand the number of 
employed people, said in a trade union language. Naturally in Italy such a 
proposal has sparked the clear opposition of the business world which accuses 
them of not being able to bear the costs of such an operation in a moment of 
difficulty. Others believe that, in addition to having employment benefits, 
reducing working hours to four days a week would lead to an improvement in 
productivity, due to the fact that workers would work more attentively and with 
less stress. To support this, the positive experiments carried out in Iceland and 
those started in Spain are cited.

In a recent interview with the newspaper La Stampa, Maurizio Landini, general 
secretary of the CGIL, also supports the cause of the reduction in working hours. 
When the journalist asks him: "How do you get to the new world?", Landini 
replies: "In many ways, but certainly with the reopening of the discussion on 
working time with the short four-day week: whoever did it had results also in 
terms of productivity. At the same time, the right to ongoing training within the 
working hours must be ratified". Now it is evident that the new world so desired 
by the journalist, Marco Zatterin, as by the secretary of the largest Italian 
trade union closely resembles the precariousness - which can be declined in many 
ways - in which we live. The usual unassailable principles of innovation, 
productivity, growth, saving triad are re-proposed which, like the trinity, are 
elusive and inexplicable, and since pointing to profits, in order to carry out a 
profound redistribution of wealth, is "morally" reprehensible, the category is 
used of extra profits, something random and not precisely qualifyable.  It 
doesn't go any better, as far as proposing a broad vision of the crucial passage 
in which we are immersed - climate and environmental change, pandemics, permanent 
wars, migrations - in the composite (but small) archipelago of grassroots trade 
unionism and its political referents. Looking at the platform of the unitary 
strike of last December 2nd, one seems to read a weary repetition of requests - 
including that of the reduction of working hours - which appear abstract, devoid 
of impact force, all the more so since the very proclamation of these strikes has 
become an empty, disembodied ritual: the body and imagination of the workers. 
Nothing to do with that radicalism that in not so distant times animated, 
probably as a forward flight, the discussion and ignited the imagination on 
working time and life time, on the refusal of an increasingly invasive consumer 
society. In these years of ours in which we are slowly and numbly sliding towards 
a predicted catastrophe that could put a large part if not all of humanity at 
risk - renewed atomic threats, profound climatic and environmental upheavals - it 
would be necessary to make the effort to go beyond the homework of a 
vindictiveness that finally does not differ much from the babel of chatter that 
circulates in the rooms of the institutions and of power. We do not want to deny 
the extreme difficulty of only proposing such a profound alternative, but we can 
no longer postpone at least the attempt to start a reflection, to undertake 
paths, to experiment with possibilities.

"A complicated but interesting game", as my friend Cosimo Scarinzi concluded in 
an article recently published in Umanità Nova, who also thinks about what we have 
tried to do in this article.

Angelo Barberi

https://www.sicilialibertaria.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 https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en