Italian trade unionist Luciano Muhlbauer spoke at the Socialist Alliance trade union conference last month, both in the plenary session on fighting privatisation and in a longer workshop session after the conference proper.
In the latter he explained in some detail the political and industrial situation that would lead to the extraordinary day when 3 million people marched on the streets of Rome on March 23, as well as talking about the debates in Rifondazione in the run up to their congress which are dealt with in the report from the Congress by Soraya Lawrence and Nick Wrack ( click ).
Luciano is a member of the national leadership of the Sindacato Intercategoriale dei Comitati di Base, S.in.Cobas. S.in.Cobas is an anticapitalist Trade Union which was born in the 1980s from the new movements which led social fights in the factories, in transport, in the schools and in the public sector in general, that gave birth to self-managed committees named COBAS.
This new Trade Union organisation was alternative to the traditional Trade Unions (Cgil, Cisl and Uil), all of which praticise social partnership..
COBAS took inspiration from the experience of factory councils and considers itself engaged in the process of building new democratic trade unions, based on the working class and mass organisations.
S.in.Cobas is a component member of Attac, of the network of European Marches against unemployment, social insecurity and exclusion, and have supported the various international mobilisations at the EU summits.
They are also engaged in the promoting the international co-ordination of activists, starting from multinational companies (Fiat-G.M. in Italy and Germany, Alcatel in Italy and France).
S.in.Cobas believes that the movement of workers must give birth to new tools on the international level, in order to develop co-ordination of concrete initiatives. They want to promote debate and dialogue between all those resisting capitalist globalisation; thinking it is necessary to give birth to new internationalism in the working class.
>From this point of view S.in Cobas participated in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre and in centrally involved in the planning of the European Social Forum to be held in Italy in the autumn.
Below we print part of Luciano’s speech:
"It’s a bit complicated to explain about the unions because you don’t have the same tradition of independent unions in Britain – they only exist in Italy, in France and a little bit in Spain.
They developed in the 1980’s and at the beginning of the 90s. First were the teachers and then the rail-workers then some public sector workers and then in the 90’s in some factories as well – starting from Alfa Romeo in Milan.
There were splits to the left from the CGIL and also from the Christian Democratic unions in the north of the country – because this region was to the left of the national federation.
The splits developed in a dynamic against social partnership – but also on the question of democratising the unions to put decision-making in the hands of the rank and file. There was a strong dynamic of this development up to the early 90’s – but today it doesn’t exist any more.
The independent unions exist, they have their space, but there are not any new splits from the traditional unions since then. There is also a problem between the different independent unions because each of them comes from a different history : the history of Alfa Romeo and the history of the teachers are not the same. And the leaderships are different too – and so it’s hard to bring them together.
On February 15 we did manage this. There was a strike called by all the independent unions and a march through Rome of about 100,000 people and it was politically very good. But at this moment there are differences within the independent unions with regard to the march that has been called for March 23 - where some people are supporting this and others are not.
The reason for this is because there is a fear that the demonstration will be used as an alternative to the call for a General Strike, which at this moment it’s is not sure will happen. But never the less these divisions amongst the independent unions are a real problem.
This is particularly the case because you also have a crisis in the traditional unions. For 10 or 15 years we have had the politics of social partnership – particularly since the Concordat which restricted wage rises in 1992.
But now the bosses and the government are breaking with social partnership to the right – they don’t want it any more – they want even more concessions from the unions and the workers. So today we have strikes and we have very bitter clashes about basic rights.
Two weeks ago the GCIL decided to call a general strike on March 23 – but the other traditional unions said no – we want to talk to the government.
Then there were discussions between them and finally there will be a common demonstration on the 23 – but as for the strike we still don’t know because everything is still very much in flux….."