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Issue No. 130 | 05 April 2002 |
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Lights Out on The Hill
Interview: Change Agent Industrial: Balancing the Books Unions: Breaking Out Politics: Pissing on the Light on the Hill History: Of Death and Taxes International: Now That's a Strike! Satire: Mugabe Voted Miss Zimbabwe: Denies Election Rigged Poetry: Flick Go The Branches Review: Red, Red Clydeside
The Soapbox Sport Week in Review Postcard
 Puplick's SermonChikka's LegacySocialists in the UKOrganising GloballyGrape DisappointmentUnion Resignations : Crisis or Opportunity?
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International Now That's a Strike!By Andrew Casey
Italy's big three national trade union centres, representing about 12 million members, have called a one -day general strike for Monday week ( April 16) against the right-wing Berlusconi government's plans to introduce new laws which will make it very easy to sack workers. The general strike, the first in twenty years, is expected to get overwhelming support from the union movement's membership. Until Silvio Berlusconi's arrival on the political scene Italy has always had a strong tradition of consensual government, and the labour movement has always had a strong influence in the running of the country. But Berlusconi's political heroes are Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher.He emerged victorious in elections last year, with the promise of overhauling labour laws, and cutting back the traditional power of the union movement. Ironically Berlusconi's greatest current ally in Europe is Tony Blair, the UK Labour Party's PM - while the German and French political leadership look on askance at what Berlusconi is doing. The major left national union centre, the CGIL, demonstrated the mass anger at the government's employment policies at the end of March when estimates of between 1 million and 2 million people turned up to a rally in the streets of Rome. The CGIL demonstrators, brought in from all over the country on 9,000 buses, 60 trains, three ships and two planes turned the city's Circus Maximus - the site of ancient Roman chariot races - into a sea of red flags and banners. The Left was also enraged because Ministers in the Berlusconi government had suggested that a political murder - four days before the rally - of a government labour adviser had happened because of the urgings of the trade union movement. Marco Biagi, who had been killed by an off-shoot of the Red Brigades, was the controversial author of the new laws which are strongly opposed by all sections of the union movement. As a result of the huge turnout at the Marc rally trade union leaders are confident that the general strike will get huge support . The other - national trade union centres, the CISL and the UIL - which did not support the CGIL March Rome rally, are backing Monday week's general strike. Sergio Cofferati, the CGIL head , committed his union centre to organising the successful mass rally in Rome, which was described by some Italian newspapers as the biggest of its kind ever to take place in the country. The extraordinary success of the rally is now being seen as a personal victory for Cofferati. He is now being hailed as the man who could at last bring unity to the divided and bickering ranks of the Italian Left and turn it into an effective opposition to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Many of his political allies, and opponents, warned against holding the March rally saying the Left would be wrongfooted by the tragedy, and would find it hard to mount a determined protest to laws designed to give employers much greater freedom to fire their workers. But Cofferati had different ideas. "We are here to fight terrorism, to support democracy and to show the government its intentions are wrong," he told the demonstrators. "With your courage and your passion, we will realise our dreams." Cofferati's CGIL has 5.3m members, a mainly blue collar union grouping with its roots in the industrial north. It had close ties with the former Italian Communist party and now its modern heirs, the Democrats of the Left and the far-left Communist Refoundation party. Founded in 1906, it is by far the oldest of the three Italian national union centres.. Savino Pezzotta's CISL, with its 4m members, is a more centrist, predominantly white-collar union grouping, strong in the south and in public administration. It was closely linked with the defunct Christian Democrat party which dominated post-war Italian politics until brought down by the bribes scandals of the early 1990s. The smaller UIL, led by Luigi Angeletti, is about half the size of the CISL. It has a more balanced territorial and occupational make-up than the other unions, with a significant membership among middle management. Politically, it was tied to the Socialist party which had its heyday under Bettino Craxi in the 1980s and also disintegrated under the corruption probes
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