A widespread battle for wage increases and a strong demand for a reduction in working hours is the only necessary and central battle the labor movement must win to change and reverse the balance of power between employers, the government, and the working masses. The largest trade union, the CGIL, continues to lack a strategy commensurate with the ongoing class struggle. After the general strike against the government's budget, called alone on December 12th, no other protest initiative has been implemented or defined for the continuation of a labor and political battle.
The difficulties of participation and mobilization, which had been highlighted in previous internal discussions within the organization, and the further tearing of the already tattered solidarity fabric of the workers' movement due to the mistaken choice not to converge, after the first general and united strike of October 3rd, with the strike called by the grassroots unions on November 28th, equally and specularly guilty of sectarianism and a poor understanding of the real needs of the moment, were not even minimally taken into consideration. The same necessary and necessary discussion on the defeat of last June's labor referendums and the defeat of the metalworkers' contract, compared to the albeit not unrealistic unitary proposals, the setback on public sector workers' contracts that have not been signed, but which precisely for this reason should require a virtually absent union political strategy for their reopening and questioning, was, in the debate of the CGIL General Assembly on January 26 and 27, downgraded to a discussion of internal organizational procedures, particularly for the distribution of the financial resources available to the Chambers of Labor and the various trade union bodies, and the start of a signature drive for the launch of a popular initiative law on healthcare was formally launched.Once again, the role and function of a resistance organization of the labor movement and of all workers, which the CGIL should be, is being distorted into a surreptitious function of the "broad field" parties, or if you prefer, the so-called center-left, for a wholly political and institutional strategy geared towards the upcoming elections. This logic also includes the commitment made by joining the "No" committees for the upcoming confirmatory constitutional referendum in March on the separation of judicial careers.
Public healthcare is in an increasingly poor state, its funding reduced and effectively replaced by countless agreements with private providers, which in many areas account for well over 50% of healthcare provision. These same countless supplementary healthcare funds, provided for in sector contracts, represent a concrete and formidable tool for further reducing public provision and a true new "mutualization" of the healthcare system.
The working conditions of healthcare workers, from doctors to nurses, are underserved, torn by a plethora of different, downwardly priced contracts between the public and private sectors, characterized by the widespread and ever-increasing use of subcontracting, sham cooperatives, and precarious staff. The labor movement's stubborn refusal to mount a united and widespread battle for real wage increases, advocating the recovery of automatic wage adjustment mechanisms in the face of inflation-thus canceling the "Pact for the Factory"-a real and significant reduction in working hours, as well as a reduction in atypical and precarious forms of employment, can only lead to a continued erosion of the solidarity among workers and a disaffection for participation and collective struggle.
The paradox of this unfortunate approach is that political abstention itself, which for all progressives, as well as for the majority of union leaders, seems to be the greater evil, will only increase. The logic and analytical capacity of this political and trade union class is diametrically opposed to a correct-albeit minimal-materialist analysis.
The same popular initiative bill on public healthcare, while having some positive content (measures for the elderly and vulnerable, support for parenting and sexual education, and mental health protection), nevertheless falls short on some fundamental aspects. This bill, which is presented as a framework law, does not address the issue of eliminating, reducing, or even simply containing private healthcare. While the first articles call for increased funding and a strengthening of the National Health Service, the position regarding intramural visits, i.e., paid visits and private agreements, is unclear. These are the tools with which almost all Regions, on which the healthcare system depends, seek to reduce waiting lists and support the healthcare needs of the vast majority of workers.
It is clear that the bill stems from a lack of serious reflection by the various sectors, including the CGIL as a whole, on the damage that private healthcare funds have had and are having and all the regulations, now highly developed in both national and second-level bargaining, regarding so-called contractual or company welfare. These are vigorously reintroduced and refinanced by the same trade union leaders with each contract renewal, and even included in the public sector. We should begin to consider reducing them, initially considering the elimination of those preferential regulations that exclude these wage portions from contributions and that allow employers to exempt these monetary masses from taxation.
The deletion from the text proposed in the initial proposal of that article (art. 11), which albeit timidly attempted to regulate the forms of supplementary healthcare, containing the tax breaks currently envisaged and which, in order to safeguard the contribution amount for social security purposes, indicated that the contributions paid were subject to pension contributions paid by the employer, testifies to the renunciation of any, however difficult, action to counter this important aspect.[1]This would mean explicitly stating that health must be removed from any profit-making mechanism, reaffirming its fundamental nature as a right and not as a commodity.
Overcoming the corporatization model introduced way back in 1992, never corrected by subsequent governments, especially center-left ones, strengthened in the late 1990s by then-Minister of Health Rosy Bindi, who confirmed and strengthened the corporate-oriented evolution and "Pilates-like" established supplementary healthcare funds for services that exceeded the levels of care guaranteed by the National Health Service, which were prohibited by the 1978 law establishing the National Health Service. Healthcare should respond to needs and not to private profit mechanisms, just as it should not respond to privatized schemes.
In essence, what is needed is not so much a new bill - given the general parliamentary framework and given that every proposal must be discussed in parliamentary committees before reaching the floor, and that many of them stall during the legislative process and very few are definitively approved[2]- but a season of real conflict, starting with healthcare workers, with a few precise objectives on which to converge the entire workers' movement in solidarity with each individual sector of the workforce.
Just as partial victories, if not generalized, are destined for defeat or corporate retreat, the defeats of individual sectors are destined to become generalized if a movement of solidarity and unity is not established. The only real weapon we have, as a workers' movement, is our unity and conflict. Other paths lead to other shores and not to the liberation of labor from capitalist exploitation.
Notes
The title is a tribute to the opening lines of William Shakespeare's famous Hamlet monologue, which consists of an existential reflection on life and death, on suffering misfortune (being) or rebelling against it (not being), weighing the dilemma of enduring suffering and committing suicide.
[1]See From "The High Road to a Blind Vicolo?", "Lavoro e salute," year 42, no. 1, January 2026 (https://www.lavoroesalute.org/images/pdf/2026gennaio/lavoroesaluten1gennaio2026.pdf).
[2]From 1948 to today, out of 329 popular initiative bills, only 7 have been definitively approved, some of which were supported by regional governments. See for all the fate of the popular initiative bill "Charter of Universal Labor Rights," for a new Workers' Statute, presented by the CGIL in 2016 with over 3 million signatures and, as far as we know, not even discussed in the relevant parliamentary committees. See "Popular Initiative Law in the Italian Republic," Wikipedia (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legge_di_iniziativa_popolare_nella_Repubblica_Italiana).
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
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Link: (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #42 - Popular initiative law or class struggle, that is the question - Cristiano Valente (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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