Contrary to all the narratives about the disappearance of the class
struggle, the fundamental conflict that develops in society is the
struggle between capital and labor. The social and cultural vicissitudes
are closely linked to the progress of this struggle and to the balance
of power between these two classes. ---- The data, moreover from the
same employers' and government institutes, confirm that workers' wages
have decreased to the advantage of employers' profits. ---- The very
latest study by Inapp (National Institute for the Analysis of Public
Policies), a public research body controlled by the Ministry of Labor
and Social Policies, also taken up by the recent analysis by the
Di Vittorio Foundation, "the wage question" presented in the days
preceding the national general strike of November 29, confirms the
downward trend of wages compared to profits.
As can be seen from the graph below, everything that has been lost from
work has gone to profits. Since 1960, profits have grown by 18 points of
GDP, while wages have lost another 18 points of GDP.
But to be even clearer, with respect to this battle between capital and
labor, the second graph shows us how from the 1990s to today, the annual
purchasing power of workers' wages in Italy has actually decreased,
going from 33,596 euros in 1991 to 32,450 at the end of 2023.
Share of wages and share of profits in Italy. Years 1960-2022 (%)
Inapp Report 2023
Notes: share of GDP calculated at factor cost. The dotted lines
represent the five-year moving averages. Source: Inapp processing on
AMECO data, 2023
Only on the basis of these two data, highly significant in themselves, a
deep self-critical reflection would be necessary on the part of the
majority trade union organizations, starting with the CGIL itself,
which, despite having finally proclaimed the general strike of November
29, together with the UIL, with the CISL now increasingly collateral to
the Meloni, Taiani, Salvini government, does not seem to have a credible
project and a political-union battle program up to the situation. In the
conclusions of its last general assembly, formally the highest national
decision-making body, held on December 6, there is no further indication
of the general strike already called, nor above all certain and clear
objectives of contrast with regard to the dramatic economic and social
situation, which is nevertheless denounced. With a further delegation,
any other initiatives are referred to the national secretariat pending
the approval of the Budget Law, which now approved confirms its
ineffectiveness for the fate of the working masses, in reality focusing
exclusively on the next referendum season, which will take place no
earlier than next spring. The vacuity of such an indication is
contrasted by the stalemate of negotiations such as that of the
metalworkers, which sees Federmeccanica absolutely against the salary
requests indicated in the hypothesis of contract renewal and the closing
with a downward trend of the contract for 2022/2024 for public
employment, relating to the Central Functions (ministries, tax agencies,
public and economic bodies) which concerns approximately 200 thousand
workers, closed with a miserable increase of 5.78% compared to an
inflation that grew by 17% in the same years. This contract, signed by
the CISL and the galaxy of autonomous and yellow unions, and that the
current vote against, expressed by another 40 thousand workers, in the
referendum proposed and self-organized by CGIL, UIL and USB, cannot be
invalidated, despite having a high political significance, having no
legal value. What is essentially missing is an acknowledgement of the
concrete needs that the working masses have today, moreover clearly
outlined and indicated by the same study and survey to which the same
Vittorio Foundation referred in its press conference before the strike
and which we have already highlighted on these pages (see CANTIERE n 19
September 2023): the priority of the wage issue. It would then be
necessary to develop a generalized and unitary strategy of wage
bargaining, starting from the assumption that inflation in the last
three years, asking, at the very least, increases proportional to
inflation for all sectors. It is unthinkable and politically functional
to leave each individual category alone, much less is it possible to
reverse the overall loss of wages compared to corporate profits, as we
have seen in the two graphs above, through the referendum initiative.
The referendum battle, as proposed, takes on the function of a surrogate
for the lack of a unitary and generalized class struggle and therefore
becomes highly risky since sectors that are not interested in issues
relating to subordinate work also participate in the referendums and
declared adversaries also participate. In the event of defeat or failure
to reach the necessary quorum, 26 million voters, the current balance of
power would definitively crystallize against the working masses and all
the trade union organizations, starting with the CGIL itself, structures
of resistance of the working masses by their intrinsic nature, would
have even greater difficulty in relaunching their own specific battles
in defense of the subaltern classes. Furthermore, with this battle, the
CGIL leadership group in particular, wrongly places itself as a
surrogate for a lack of political representation of the working masses,
the causes of which we have addressed several times and which can be
identified, as a priority, precisely in the continuous wage and
regulatory decline in the workplace and in the absence of battles won or
acquired on the union and therefore social terrain. A decline due
precisely to the convinced adhesion of those former political
representatives, the former parties of the institutional left, from the
former PCI and PSI, up to the current Democratic Party, to the
mercantile and competitive mechanism of the capitalist economic system,
to which the union leadership group referred, despite the more or less
official declarations of their total autonomy and the need to forcefully
develop an action of pressure, criticism and project challenge towards
the political system taken as a whole, without privileged relationships
and without collateralism. Concrete possibilities for changing the
balance of power are instead determined by victories, even if partial,
on the strictly trade union terrain, in the classic clash between public
or private employers and the working masses. There is a very close link
between the material and concrete conditions in the workplace and the
prospect of "pursuing the objective of building a socially,
environmentally and industrially sustainable change, which leaves no
person and no territory behind" as can be read in the final document
released by the CGIL general assembly on 6 December, which if not
combined with a clear and explicit battle for the overcoming of
capitalism, as an economic and social horizon, remains a simple and
banal statement. More than thirty years after the famous agreement with
the then Ciampi Government (July 1993) on the so-called concertation, it
would be useful and necessary today to make a profound self-critical
rereading of that period, based precisely on the ineffectiveness and
transience of those agreements, which were stimulated by the government
in function of an income policy that should have replaced the sliding
wage scale, abolished the year before, with the consent of the CGIL
itself, but which in reality determined, as we have seen, the beginning
of that cycle of constant loss of purchasing power of workers' wages and
of the working masses, which has continued to this day. It was in that
agreement that the two levels of collective bargaining were established,
and a trilateral consultation between the government, employers'
organizations and unions, on economic policy, which was to be
implemented through two annual sessions close to the Def and the
Financial Law. In essence, the first level salary was to move with
consumer prices, replacing the sliding scale in maintaining purchasing
power, the second level would have referred to the "margins of
productivity exceeding that eventually used for salary increases in the
Ccnl".(1) To demonstrate how this agreement was in fact a further
capitulation and how the same union leadership group was collateral to
the employers' and government's choices, it is sufficient to remember
that already in '95, only two years after that agreement, the social
security system was modified with the Dini reform, establishing
contributory accounting and no longer retributive accounting, thus
greatly reducing the pension benefits of workers, to then continue in
2009 with a further worsening modification of the same "concertation"
foreseen by the Ciampi protocol, replacing the programmed inflation
rate, on which the national contracts should have been based, with the
data provided by a technical body such as Istat with the indication of
the harmonized index of consumer prices net of the dynamics of the
prices of imported energy goods, the infamous IPCA - Nei, still in
force, in addition to extending the duration of the economic part of the
Ccnl from two to three years, merging with the regulatory part that is
reduced from the previous four. This further agreement, although not
initially signed by the CGIL, was in fact confirmed if not worsened by
the subsequent inter-confederal agreement, in 2014 on the Consolidated
Law on Representation which had been anticipated by the Sacconi decree,
the famous article 8 which gave the possibility of derogating company
contracts from national ones, determining a further fracture in the
solidarity fabric between the different production realities, a fracture
also facilitated by the extreme fragmentation of our production fabric
which does not facilitate and does not guarantee articulated bargaining,
except in large company and production groups. The graph below clearly
highlights this situation indicating only 5 million workers,
approximately 26.7% of the workforce, interested in second-level
productivity contracts with an average annual amount of 1505 euros.
In conclusion of this brief excursus of the political dynamics of the
unions, it must be added that this decline in the balance of power
between the working masses and the employers has been and is being
contributed to in no small degree by the "stubbornness", not to mention
the co-responsibility, of the union leaderships, in the choice of
developing and increasing the so-called "corporate welfare" with an
evident transfer of contributions to private healthcare, in addition to
the tax exemption of ever-increasing wage quotas by the employers and
the same co-management and sponsorship of the negotiating funds for
supplementary pensions, leading the largest Italian union, the CGIL, to
support, schizophrenically and tragically, well before the same request
recently implemented by the party of the President of the Council,
Brothers of Italy in the latest financial law, fortunately not yet
passed by the Chambers, the proposal of silent assent to those who work
in small businesses and to young people. (2)
Note:
(1) point 3 of the Protocol of 23 July 1993 between the government and
the social partners - income and employment policy, contractual
arrangements, labour policies and support for the production system.
(2) XIX CONGRESS "WORK CREATES THE FUTURE" NEW SOCIAL STATE FOR
COHESION, INCLUSION AND FULL EMPLOYMENT AND PUBLIC CITIZENSHIP NETWORKS
Paragraph 3: "Finally, it is necessary to relaunch membership of the
negotiated supplementary pension scheme, making it effectively
accessible also to those who work in small businesses and to young
people, through the start of a new semester of silent consent and
informed membership, the tax reduction on returns and greater support
for investments in the real economy of the country by the negotiated
pension funds"
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.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
struggle, the fundamental conflict that develops in society is the
struggle between capital and labor. The social and cultural vicissitudes
are closely linked to the progress of this struggle and to the balance
of power between these two classes. ---- The data, moreover from the
same employers' and government institutes, confirm that workers' wages
have decreased to the advantage of employers' profits. ---- The very
latest study by Inapp (National Institute for the Analysis of Public
Policies), a public research body controlled by the Ministry of Labor
and Social Policies, also taken up by the recent analysis by the
Di Vittorio Foundation, "the wage question" presented in the days
preceding the national general strike of November 29, confirms the
downward trend of wages compared to profits.
As can be seen from the graph below, everything that has been lost from
work has gone to profits. Since 1960, profits have grown by 18 points of
GDP, while wages have lost another 18 points of GDP.
But to be even clearer, with respect to this battle between capital and
labor, the second graph shows us how from the 1990s to today, the annual
purchasing power of workers' wages in Italy has actually decreased,
going from 33,596 euros in 1991 to 32,450 at the end of 2023.
Share of wages and share of profits in Italy. Years 1960-2022 (%)
Inapp Report 2023
Notes: share of GDP calculated at factor cost. The dotted lines
represent the five-year moving averages. Source: Inapp processing on
AMECO data, 2023
Only on the basis of these two data, highly significant in themselves, a
deep self-critical reflection would be necessary on the part of the
majority trade union organizations, starting with the CGIL itself,
which, despite having finally proclaimed the general strike of November
29, together with the UIL, with the CISL now increasingly collateral to
the Meloni, Taiani, Salvini government, does not seem to have a credible
project and a political-union battle program up to the situation. In the
conclusions of its last general assembly, formally the highest national
decision-making body, held on December 6, there is no further indication
of the general strike already called, nor above all certain and clear
objectives of contrast with regard to the dramatic economic and social
situation, which is nevertheless denounced. With a further delegation,
any other initiatives are referred to the national secretariat pending
the approval of the Budget Law, which now approved confirms its
ineffectiveness for the fate of the working masses, in reality focusing
exclusively on the next referendum season, which will take place no
earlier than next spring. The vacuity of such an indication is
contrasted by the stalemate of negotiations such as that of the
metalworkers, which sees Federmeccanica absolutely against the salary
requests indicated in the hypothesis of contract renewal and the closing
with a downward trend of the contract for 2022/2024 for public
employment, relating to the Central Functions (ministries, tax agencies,
public and economic bodies) which concerns approximately 200 thousand
workers, closed with a miserable increase of 5.78% compared to an
inflation that grew by 17% in the same years. This contract, signed by
the CISL and the galaxy of autonomous and yellow unions, and that the
current vote against, expressed by another 40 thousand workers, in the
referendum proposed and self-organized by CGIL, UIL and USB, cannot be
invalidated, despite having a high political significance, having no
legal value. What is essentially missing is an acknowledgement of the
concrete needs that the working masses have today, moreover clearly
outlined and indicated by the same study and survey to which the same
Vittorio Foundation referred in its press conference before the strike
and which we have already highlighted on these pages (see CANTIERE n 19
September 2023): the priority of the wage issue. It would then be
necessary to develop a generalized and unitary strategy of wage
bargaining, starting from the assumption that inflation in the last
three years, asking, at the very least, increases proportional to
inflation for all sectors. It is unthinkable and politically functional
to leave each individual category alone, much less is it possible to
reverse the overall loss of wages compared to corporate profits, as we
have seen in the two graphs above, through the referendum initiative.
The referendum battle, as proposed, takes on the function of a surrogate
for the lack of a unitary and generalized class struggle and therefore
becomes highly risky since sectors that are not interested in issues
relating to subordinate work also participate in the referendums and
declared adversaries also participate. In the event of defeat or failure
to reach the necessary quorum, 26 million voters, the current balance of
power would definitively crystallize against the working masses and all
the trade union organizations, starting with the CGIL itself, structures
of resistance of the working masses by their intrinsic nature, would
have even greater difficulty in relaunching their own specific battles
in defense of the subaltern classes. Furthermore, with this battle, the
CGIL leadership group in particular, wrongly places itself as a
surrogate for a lack of political representation of the working masses,
the causes of which we have addressed several times and which can be
identified, as a priority, precisely in the continuous wage and
regulatory decline in the workplace and in the absence of battles won or
acquired on the union and therefore social terrain. A decline due
precisely to the convinced adhesion of those former political
representatives, the former parties of the institutional left, from the
former PCI and PSI, up to the current Democratic Party, to the
mercantile and competitive mechanism of the capitalist economic system,
to which the union leadership group referred, despite the more or less
official declarations of their total autonomy and the need to forcefully
develop an action of pressure, criticism and project challenge towards
the political system taken as a whole, without privileged relationships
and without collateralism. Concrete possibilities for changing the
balance of power are instead determined by victories, even if partial,
on the strictly trade union terrain, in the classic clash between public
or private employers and the working masses. There is a very close link
between the material and concrete conditions in the workplace and the
prospect of "pursuing the objective of building a socially,
environmentally and industrially sustainable change, which leaves no
person and no territory behind" as can be read in the final document
released by the CGIL general assembly on 6 December, which if not
combined with a clear and explicit battle for the overcoming of
capitalism, as an economic and social horizon, remains a simple and
banal statement. More than thirty years after the famous agreement with
the then Ciampi Government (July 1993) on the so-called concertation, it
would be useful and necessary today to make a profound self-critical
rereading of that period, based precisely on the ineffectiveness and
transience of those agreements, which were stimulated by the government
in function of an income policy that should have replaced the sliding
wage scale, abolished the year before, with the consent of the CGIL
itself, but which in reality determined, as we have seen, the beginning
of that cycle of constant loss of purchasing power of workers' wages and
of the working masses, which has continued to this day. It was in that
agreement that the two levels of collective bargaining were established,
and a trilateral consultation between the government, employers'
organizations and unions, on economic policy, which was to be
implemented through two annual sessions close to the Def and the
Financial Law. In essence, the first level salary was to move with
consumer prices, replacing the sliding scale in maintaining purchasing
power, the second level would have referred to the "margins of
productivity exceeding that eventually used for salary increases in the
Ccnl".(1) To demonstrate how this agreement was in fact a further
capitulation and how the same union leadership group was collateral to
the employers' and government's choices, it is sufficient to remember
that already in '95, only two years after that agreement, the social
security system was modified with the Dini reform, establishing
contributory accounting and no longer retributive accounting, thus
greatly reducing the pension benefits of workers, to then continue in
2009 with a further worsening modification of the same "concertation"
foreseen by the Ciampi protocol, replacing the programmed inflation
rate, on which the national contracts should have been based, with the
data provided by a technical body such as Istat with the indication of
the harmonized index of consumer prices net of the dynamics of the
prices of imported energy goods, the infamous IPCA - Nei, still in
force, in addition to extending the duration of the economic part of the
Ccnl from two to three years, merging with the regulatory part that is
reduced from the previous four. This further agreement, although not
initially signed by the CGIL, was in fact confirmed if not worsened by
the subsequent inter-confederal agreement, in 2014 on the Consolidated
Law on Representation which had been anticipated by the Sacconi decree,
the famous article 8 which gave the possibility of derogating company
contracts from national ones, determining a further fracture in the
solidarity fabric between the different production realities, a fracture
also facilitated by the extreme fragmentation of our production fabric
which does not facilitate and does not guarantee articulated bargaining,
except in large company and production groups. The graph below clearly
highlights this situation indicating only 5 million workers,
approximately 26.7% of the workforce, interested in second-level
productivity contracts with an average annual amount of 1505 euros.
In conclusion of this brief excursus of the political dynamics of the
unions, it must be added that this decline in the balance of power
between the working masses and the employers has been and is being
contributed to in no small degree by the "stubbornness", not to mention
the co-responsibility, of the union leaderships, in the choice of
developing and increasing the so-called "corporate welfare" with an
evident transfer of contributions to private healthcare, in addition to
the tax exemption of ever-increasing wage quotas by the employers and
the same co-management and sponsorship of the negotiating funds for
supplementary pensions, leading the largest Italian union, the CGIL, to
support, schizophrenically and tragically, well before the same request
recently implemented by the party of the President of the Council,
Brothers of Italy in the latest financial law, fortunately not yet
passed by the Chambers, the proposal of silent assent to those who work
in small businesses and to young people. (2)
Note:
(1) point 3 of the Protocol of 23 July 1993 between the government and
the social partners - income and employment policy, contractual
arrangements, labour policies and support for the production system.
(2) XIX CONGRESS "WORK CREATES THE FUTURE" NEW SOCIAL STATE FOR
COHESION, INCLUSION AND FULL EMPLOYMENT AND PUBLIC CITIZENSHIP NETWORKS
Paragraph 3: "Finally, it is necessary to relaunch membership of the
negotiated supplementary pension scheme, making it effectively
accessible also to those who work in small businesses and to young
people, through the start of a new semester of silent consent and
informed membership, the tax reduction on returns and greater support
for investments in the real economy of the country by the negotiated
pension funds"
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.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
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