In April of this year the workers from one of the most important factories of the car manufacturing group Fiat (that of Melfi, in the south of Italy, "showcase" of flexibility, discipline and low salaries) enter a struggle to make their wage levels and working conditions equal to those of other Fiat establishments, and with a 21-day extended strike were able to obtain a substantial victory. The importance of this struggle may be understood if it is taken into account that in Italy the form of struggle of the prolonged strike had been unused for almost half a century. It was, precisely, in the ‘50s and beginning of the ‘60s that the trade union bureaucracy, including its "left-wing" component, elaborated a strategy based on the concepts of "articulated strikes", as the only instrument of union struggle.Even in the period of social and political crisis troof 1968-76, which developed into the existence of a prerevolutionary situation, the big struggles for collective bargaining agreements were based on long conflicts, articulated on the basis of 20 hours of strike per month, sometimes accompanied by general strikes of 24 hours, impressive, but always as an expression of a policy of pressureand not one of confrontation.
Only ourselves, consequent Trotskyists -at the time a small minority-, underlined the need to develop forms of struggle which were both unified and fought tooth and nail. This without denying the validity of the use of articulated struggles, in particular under the radicalized forms they assumed in that epoch, achieving for moments real setbacks in production and importante conomic gains for the workers, in spite of the policy of contention by the trade union bureaucracy and the "left." We demonstrated, in any case, how these kinds of struggles limited the value and political impact of class mobilization. In any case they were able in general to achieve positive results in the terrain of economic demands, in as much as there existed in that epoch economic margin for capital to allow itself, under pressure of the struggle, to make concessions to the working class. The development of the economic and social crisis of capitalism in the middle of the ‘70s not only reduced this margin but also has led capital and its various governments (in Italy, predominantly of the center-left) to develop counter-offensives against the masses that greatly made up for the concessions of the decades of the post-war. For this reason the need for unified struggles to be fought tooth and nail in order to defeat the bosses offensive has become more and more evident.
Even today the only ones to underline the need for such forms of struggle have been the comrades of Progetto Comunista, against all the other forces and currents of the political and trade union left. It has been the vanguard of the class which has matured the need to transcend the old and traditional forms of struggle. It is true that in the Melfi Fiat struggle there has been a significant presence of our political current (the factory circle of the Partido de la Refundación Comunista,of which we form a part, and which possesses various trade union delegates in the CGIL, voted by majority our thesis in the last Congress of the party and its secretary is a militant of our organization), but it would be an incorrect operation to attribute to our influence, although of course positive, as the option for thousands of workers. An option which is framed in a broader situation, in which the subject of tooth and nail struggle had already emerged -towards the end of 2003- in the struggle of the urban transport workers, who independently of any union organization threw themselves into the struggle against a sell-out contract. Also in this case our intervention had achieved some partial successes in important situations (Venice, Genoa), although the dispersion of categories in the various cities and the different levels of mobilization among them did not allow for the hypothesis of the prolonged strike to really be developed, and the mobilizations ended with a partial defeat. A defeat which in any case has not prevented the struggle of the local transport workers from being shown as an example for broad sectors of the class and from placing as the order of the day radical forms of struggle.T
hese forms, in other terms, found their expression during the last two years in the struggles of the most important sector in industry, the metal workers. Here the bosses renewed the collective bargaining agreement, closing a sell-out contract with two of the three main Italian trade union confederations, the CISL (Catholic) and the UIL (of distant right-wing Social Democrat origin), which the Fiom, the metalworkers union of the CGIL, led by a sector of the trade-union "left", refused to sign. Even though the Fiom represented the absolute majority of the workers in the sector (in Italy there exists a plurality of trade union organizations in each workplace, with free adhesion), the sell out contract was approved, also because the CSIL and the UIL have rejected any kind of referendum among the workers. The most appropriate response should have been to continue the struggle for another bargaining agreement. It was, undoubtedly,a hard road, due to the unequal level of combativity of the class, but it should have been attempted. Too "new" and radical for a bureaucracy, even a "left-wing" one.
So, the Fiom has developed, on the basis of its actual force in the medium sized and large factories, struggles in defence of economic demands in order to obtain "pre-contracts,"that is, company-wide accords which "anticipate" a hypothetical future national agreement (in reality, defending the proposal of the Fiom bargaining agreement).With a partialized struggle, but coordinated and very radicalized, which brought to mind the forms of struggle of the ‘70s (firm picket lines, the blocking of merchandise, etc.), hundreds of positive accords were achieved, within a framework that has made not only the government, but the CISL and the liberal exponents of Olivo as well, speak of an emergency in the "public order."(We point out that the largest company in which the pre-contract was arrived at is the Fincantieri, a shipyard group with nearly 10,000 workers, in which our organization has a significant presence, particularly in the Genoa plant; this is even more important in as much as it concerns a group which still counts on the particpation of the State, whereas a result the struggle has bent the will of the government representatives.)
The significative events operating in the terrain of the workers struggle did not take place in the framework of social isolation; on the contrary. At the same moment in which the struggles were occuring at Melfi, from the local transport worker and the metal workers of the Fiom, important mobilizations emerged over other cuestions, ranging from the struggle against the imperialist war in Iraq, to those in the environmental terrain with massive road and railway lineblockages. In particular, a few months before the struggle at Melfi, the region in which it is located, Basilicata, had been rocked by a triumphant mass struggle against the creation, in the locality of Scanzano, of a national dump of radioactive garbage, with the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of persons in the demonstrations and roadblocks.Of course, this struggle, in which many Melfi workers participated, influenced in the development of its radicalization. A positive interaction is taking place among diverse sectors and struggles.
Although with many contradictions (in most branches of industry the trade union bureaucrats unilaterally signed sell-out contracts without significant reactions from the workers), the process of radicalization of social conflict in Italy is advancing.
The problem is giving it a general and unifying perspective. That is the battle that we are actually moving forward, alone, as the AMR Progetto Comunista. That is, around the demands of the prolonged general strike on a program which includes the recomposition of wages, the reduction of the work day, the abolition of flexibility, the incorporation of casual workers into the permanent staff with full labor rights, a dignified social wage for all the unemployed, the defense of the "social welfare State", and which concludes with the slogan of the expulsion of the anti-worker and antipopular government of Berlusconi.
The objective conditions and those favoring the potential disposition of the masses towards such a perspective are present, what is lacking is a conscious leadership, strong enough to develop actions capable of achieving the concrete realization of this perspective.
The problem of the construction of the revolutionary party and of the conquest of hegemony among the mass sectors continues to be the central question. The current battle of the Italian section of the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundationof the Fourth International advances towards the struggle for the prolonged general strike and for class independence in relation to the bourgeois center-left.