The referendums that will be held on June 8 and 9 are the best means
available to the far-right government to bury once and for all somesacrosanct rights that, with the mirage of a favorable vote, their
promoters - unions and opposition parties - have given up on agitating
in the streets and workplaces well in advance. They have preferred to
bet on the lame horse of referendums that directly involve only a very
small part of the population, trusting in the knock-on effect that
another referendum could have had, the one on differentiated autonomy,
against which a large protest movement was forming from below, which the
Constitutional Court thought to defuse in time.
Predictable outcome, to be attributed to the carelessness and strategic
cowardice of the promoters of the referendums, who have understood
little or nothing of the lesson that the referendum instrument has
taught Italians in recent decades: when it went well, the referendum
vote was distorted and continuously called into question; and when it
went badly, the demands for freedom and social justice that they
conveyed were undermined for decades. This demonstrates that the
abrogative referendum permitted by the Italian Constitution is not at
all at the service of the working classes, as alleged and fake democrats
have always babbled, but on the contrary it was imposed from above, from
the halls of power, to channel the popular protest that is mounting.
June 8 and 9, as is universally predictable, will be "beach" days in
which the referendums will not only not obtain the "quorum" of voters
but abstentionism will be so massive as to allow the forces of reaction
to draw useful omens for other, more daring anti-democratic pronouncements.
For us Sicilian anarchists, who have always made referendum
abstentionism a matter of principle (refusal of delegation) as well as
political strategy (preventing the recovery and distortion of
struggles), all that remains is to stand in solidarity with those who
will suffer most from the looming defeat, having been deprived of a just
right, and to point out, for the future, more effective and alternative
tools to the referendum shortcut and institutional mediation.
Self-organization and self-management of struggles, direct assembly
democracy, radicality of objectives (together with the ability to "read"
reality, and immerse oneself in it), must not remain empty words but
return to be charged with disruptive effects on the current political
and social system. They will be the true antidotes to the authoritarian
and fascist drift that surrounds us.
Let's now look in detail at what the referendums of June 8 and 9 are
about, using the summary prepared by the Confederazione Unitaria di Base
(CUB):
The first of the four referendums on work calls for the repeal of the
rules on dismissals present in the contract with increasing protections
of the Jobs Act, preventing reinstatement even in the case in which the
judge declares the interruption of the relationship unjust and unfounded
The second concerns the cancellation of the ceiling on the compensation
provided for unjustified dismissals in small businesses, canceling the
maximum limit of six months' salary.
The third aims to eliminate some rules on the use of fixed-term
contracts, to reduce the scourge of precarious employment, exceeding the
limit of 12 months and introducing the obligation to provide reasons for
the use of temporary work.
The fourth intervenes in the area of health and safety at work: in the
event of an accident, liability may be extended to the contracting
company, which must have financial solidity and comply with accident
prevention regulations.
The fifth abrogative referendum proposes to halve the time of legal
residence in Italy from 10 to 5 years for those who apply for Italian
citizenship.
It is clear that the first four questions intervene on the deregulation
of the rules for the protection of workers, supported in recent years by
various right-wing, "technical" and left-wing governments, the
consequences of which have been the further precariousness of the world
of work, with thousands of deaths and millions of accidents, and the
increase in exploitation, on the one hand, and in employers' profits, on
the other; all thanks also to the role of capital's crutch played by the
"most representative" unions. The fifth seeks to respond to the racist
vulgate, which certainly did not originate with the Meloni government
(see Turco, Napolitano, Minniti...): the current institutional
oppositions, when they were in government, never dared to intervene on
the rules relating to citizenship.
On these important issues, there has been no shortage of struggles and
grassroots mobilizations, even radical ones, although they have not yet
achieved the desired results. These referendums are instead born from
the convergence between a compromised and defeatist reformist unionism,
a hypocritical and verbose left, and conflictual but impotent union and
social sectors. Their plan can only be that of defeat, being a desperate
attempt to replace or add to the conflictual plan the legalistic and
institutional one.
Anyone who knows about union matters knows well how much today's
activism is based on legal appeals, lawsuits, conciliations,
arbitrations, etc. which have ended up shifting the way of doing union
work towards dispute specialism. Many are fine with these methods, but
the most conscious elements know that they lead to a radical
transformation of the trade union instrument: trade unionism, by its
nature, cannot be free from phases of negotiation and mediation, but if
the centrality of the push from below, of the impact force of the
workers, is lost, it is transfigured into an apparatus of craftsmen,
patronages and lawyers dedicated to the daily trading of the rights of
others.
As anarchists we have the obligation to denounce this degeneration,
which has been underway for some time, and to point out the referendum
choice as the logical consequence of reformist practices, widespread
both at the top and at the base of the trade union world, even if with
different facets, which we believe should be rejected.
The CUB, and anyone who is campaigning for the "five yeses" these days,
fears that "the damage to existing laws will be compounded by the damage
of a possible flop in the referendum: failure to participate will give
strength to those who attack workers and immigrants who live and work in
Italy". The fear that the referendum instrument will lead to a tragic
failure is justified, but this time the possible flop will not be blamed
on those who want to abstain, but on those who have preferred an
ambiguous shortcut with a potentially disastrous outcome to the main
road of direct action.
Sicilian Anarchist Federation
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
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