On June 8 and 9, consultations will be held on the referendum question
proposed by the Più Europa party, together with other civil societyassociations, on the modification of the law relating to the acquisition
of citizenship, together with the four questions on work, proposed by
the CGIL. ---- The substance of the latter concerns the repeal of the
"Jobs Act", the infamous "contract with increasing protections"
(cancellation of article 18 of the Workers' Statute) introduced by the
Renzi government with decree 23/2015, the cancellation of the maximum
compensation ceiling for workers in small businesses (provided for by
law 604 of 1966); the repeal of the rules liberalizing fixed-term
contracts (Article 19 of Legislative Decree 81/2015), also introduced by
the Renzi government; the abolition of the rules that prevent the
extension of liability for accidents at work to the contracting company,
a tragically current issue linked to the continuous accidents at work
that have not coincidentally occurred, in the vast majority, to workers
of contracting companies.
The reasons for the referendum questions are real as they reflect some
immediate needs of the working class, although in this phase of heavy
defeat of the workers' movement that has now been going on for about two
generations, their result in the event of victory would in any case be
partial.
For all these reasons we believe that we cannot avoid their support and
militant commitment to reaching the quorum and for the victory of the
YES, despite the fact that we have repeatedly stated in these pages that
the referendum strategy represents a poor substitute for a real
mobilization that the union leadership group deliberately does not
pursue, despite the willingness still shown in the squares and
workplaces on the occasion of the general strike of November 29th, which
was not followed by any general mobilization.
Referendums, which can only cancel a text of law, without adding
anything, are aimed at all citizens, not just workers, and this is a
first distinction that is anything but marginal, since millions of
immigrant workers without citizenship, those who die on construction
sites, in the agricultural lands of Foggia or in the charming Tuscany
for the tomato harvest and who are the main victims of the laws that
they would like to repeal, will not have access to the ballot boxes.
Instead, those who take advantage of those same laws to exploit them
will be able to and will vote. To this must be added that to validate
the referendum response, which is not at all a given for the four YES
votes indicated by the promoters, a quorum of half of the entire
electorate must be reached. This means that at least 26 million people
will have to go to vote, otherwise the referendum will be thrown away
and significant economic damage will be added to the political defeat as
no reimbursements are foreseen.
In these conditions, the keys to the referendum machine are in the hands
of the main media, the bosses, the parliamentary parties and the
government itself, which will inevitably position themselves adversely.
The indication to have the vote take place in the first days of June, on
8 and 9 June, the date of the second round of the administrative
elections that will take place at the end of May, with schools closed
and when notoriously very small percentages of voters will go to the
polls for the run-off, already says a lot about the government's will.
But regardless of the government position and the majority parties, the
referendum has created lacerations in the Democratic Party itself,
despite the positioning of secretary Elly Schlein and in the same
leadership groups of the CGIL itself. In fact, it was the governments
led by the PD or supported by it that inflicted the heaviest blows to
the working class in terms of labor and pension legislation: from the
Fornero law with the Monti government, to the dismantling of article 18
and the introduction of the Jobs Act with the Renzi government. The
referendum strategy therefore does not represent that barrier to defeat
and above all it cannot represent the path to the recomposition of that
social block composed of workers, new generations, pensioners and women,
in order to resume the struggles and class conflict to re-determine the
balance of power necessary to reverse the current decline in the social
conditions of the working masses and the future of the new generations,
just as it will not be able to stop and defeat that process of cultural
involution that continues to penalize women by re-proposing a
misogynistic and patriarchal culture. After the general strike of
November 29, no joint initiative was taken, once again leaving the
individual categories isolated. The struggle of metalworkers for higher
wages and a real reduction in working hours was not extended to other
categories such as school workers who are still waiting for a contract
renewal, or to the public sector workers where, even if the CGIL did not
sign the CCNL hastily signed by the autonomous unions in the company of
the CISL, the government nevertheless closed a contract that does not
even recover half of the real inflation accrued in recent years. The
positive slogan of the "social revolt" that the CGIL leadership group
indicates cannot pass through a referendum vote launched in the absence
of struggles and protagonism of workers and youth. It is enough to
remember the results of other referendum battles to understand that the
abrogative referendums on labor issues have turned out to be losers. One
above all that on the Mobile Scale of June 1985 against the rule that
provided for the cut of the three points of the Mobile Scale that the
government of Bettino Craxi had issued in February of the previous year.
In favor of the repeal of the rule was expressed the former Italian
Communist Party, which only in June of the previous year, in the
European elections, had overtaken the Christian Democracy, obtaining 33%
(against 30% of the DC), in addition to that entire consistent galaxy of
militants, circles, organized political realities still present of the
extra-parliamentary left, born and rooted in the 70s of the last century.
With a turnout of 77.9% the result was 45.7% in favor of the repeal of
the rule against 54.3%; of those against and the rule, therefore
remained. In those years the workers' movement had already suffered
several defeats, the biggest being that of FIAT, which with the same
obsessiveness as today did not want to generalize, ultimately losing in
a disastrous and disorderly manner.
Today the real risk with the possible loss or failure to reach the
quorum is that of a boomerang for the CGIL itself which cannot but come
out of it further weakened. Starting from the central peripheral
management groups of the CGIL and its intermediate cadres there is
currently no serious reflection on the opportunity of a "plan B" for
which, if defeat were to manifest itself, this will inevitably take on a
further meaning of adhesion, albeit tacit, to the government's
proposals, laying the foundations for an inevitable lurch of the working
class towards the nationalist and xenophobic formations typical of the
most reactionary right.
The basic issue that should be well understood is that global economic
competitiveness has been at paroxysmal levels for over twenty years now,
and the margins for general improvement in the living conditions of the
working masses are increasingly reduced. Economic reality no longer
offers support for redistributive policies, whether reformist or Keynesian.
The project of a capitalism with a human face, supported for obvious
reasons by the international bourgeoisie and adopted by the same
political organizations that historically harked back to the heritage
and history of social democracy or to Euro-communist fantasies, which
miserably collapsed the day after their very definition, has miserably
failed.
The rearmament plan planned by the European Union, although not yet
defined in its real essence, indicates that the will and need of the
European bourgeoisies do not lie in the development of social policies
in favor of the populations through greater investments and improvements
in health and healthcare, prevention and education, in better social
conditions for the working masses, but in increasing those expenses for
armaments in an attempt to recompose that macabre balance of deterrence
with other imperialist poles such as the USA, Russia and China, in a
wicked chase always towards a third world war.
Today for the working classes there is redistribution of poverty, the
socialization of losses, the negotiated reduction of the purchasing
power of wages, wars.
Continuing to claim a strategy of concertation with the employer and
government counterpart by continuing and claiming a collaboration that
in fact has weakened the workers' movement, proposing only a referendum
line, therefore not classist, represents the continuation of this
disastrous decline in the living conditions of the working masses. The
right strategy is to resume class battles in the workplace, in schools
and in the territories for the unity of the working masses, of the
weakest and most subordinate social classes which, to climb back up the
slope of the serious defeat suffered, can only rely on their own united
and organized strength, on the development of the class struggle, on the
real advancement of a unitary "social revolt" that knows how to mobilize
sectors and classes such as the young generations and women and not the
chimerical political ballot boxes, much less the referendum ones.
Let's commit ourselves to the victory of the YES in the five referendums
so as not to further divide the defeat and to rebuild that class unity
that is essential for future struggles.
Let's direct our militant contribution to such a project, to a society
of free and equal producers.
Alternativa Libertaria/fdCA
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
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