In previous issues of our magazine, we have repeatedly analyzed the decline of Italy's major trade unions. With the June 12, 2025, appointment of its former general secretary Luigi Sbarra as undersecretary to the Prime Minister's office with responsibility for the South in the current Meloni government, and the subsequent appointment of Daniela Fumarola as national secretary, the CISL, the Catholic-based confederation, is now reassuming its true colors: that of a corporatist unionism, and therefore collateral to the government. This government has so much so that it has given a substantially positive assessment of the latest budget package, and has signed, unlike the CGIL, major national contracts in the public sector, education, and healthcare for the three-year period 2022-2024, accepting an effective loss of purchasing power for these workers, compared to real inflation over that three-year period, of 11%. The UIL itself, after an initial wavering phase that saw it converge with the CGIL in the joint declaration of general strikes, broke all hesitation, also evaluating alleged positive aspects in the latest financial maneuver of the Meloni government, positioning itself openly in opposition to the CGIL, not participating in the latest strikes and demonstrations of last October-November against the "slaughter" in Gaza and in support of the Global Sumud Flotilla, to the point of withdrawing from the last general strike of last December 12, called alone by the CGIL, and signing national contracts in the public sector with the CISL.
The era of the so-called "triple alliance," which since the mid-1970s had characterized and dominated union relations with government and employers through concerted action, is now effectively over, even if large and moderate sectors within the CGIL itself remain committed to this understanding, reconfirming in the final document of the General Assembly of April 1-2nd joint demonstrations for May Day, starting with the national demonstration in Marghera. Nonetheless, given its history, its tradition as a general confederal union, not simply a membership organization, and no longer a transmission belt for a now extinct Italian Communist Party, the CGIL remains a classic resistance structure for the labor movement. Among its members, there still remains a tentative vision of social transformation and liberation from the capitalist economic system, along with an awareness of the most serious and pernicious aspects of current society. This has led the CGIL to continue to represent a point of reference for those working and social sectors that still demonstrate a vague desire for solidarity and social justice.
The previous referendum season and the resulting defeat did not in the least lead the CGIL leadership to healthy self-criticism, nor to distance itself from a failed institutional and non-declared union strategy. It foolishly lent itself to a policy of political substitution for the broad front or the so-called center-left, ignoring the reality of the balance of power within the labor market and thus the class struggle. Without these, any future government is destined to follow the complex social conditions imposed by the capitalist economic system, with all its aberrations, including war, as has been the case with all previous center-left governments. Indeed, these have been precisely the "Trojan horses" within the working class; from the Amato government back in 1992 to Ciampi's, to the first Prodi government and subsequently the D'Alema government, through Renzi and Gentiloni, up to the government of the "super" Mario Draghi. The latest proposal from the CGIL leadership group for the popular initiative law on healthcare and a further popular initiative law on procurement, rather than a widespread and united battle on strictly union-related issues, continues along this path that can only lead to yet another defeat and the development of further distrust in the struggle and in the very stability of the union organization.
It is increasingly necessary to address the disintegration and tearing apart of the solidarity fabric of the workers' movement, clearly identifying the real reason for this historic defeat our class has suffered and is suffering. This defeat has its roots in times now long past: the so-called "triple coalition," strongly dominated by Luciano Lama's CGIL, traded a wage cut for a political prospect that was imagined imminent, with the presence of the Italian Communist Party in the so-called control room. It was the distant two-year period of 1977-78, when workers had achieved multiple victories and anti-capitalist mobilizations were booming, not only in Italy. It was Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the Italian Communist Party, the largest in the West, who reintroduced the word "austerity" as a guide for rational management of the economy. On the more specific trade union level, the clear choice was the EUR strategy, so called because it was made official and emerged from the national assembly held at the Palazzo dei Congressi in the EUR district of Rome in February 1978. In exchange for wage moderation the famous "sacrifices" the unions asked the government, then led by Giulio Andreotti with the external support of the PCI, for a plan for productive investments, especially in Southern Italy, to ensure the maintenance of employment levels.
It goes without saying that none of this was actually achieved, and that this surrender by the workers' movement paved the way for further defeats, starting with the FIAT defeat in 1980, the referendum defeat on the sliding wage scale in 1985, and finally the season of concertation with the Ciampi government, which sealed the workers' movement's definitive defeat. This culminated in the rise of the first Berlusconi government in 1994-96, and finally, through a succession of governments such as Prodi's, Berlusconi's, and the so-called technical governments, from the two Conte governments to the current Meloni government, in office since 2022.
The real situation of our class is now clear: the trade union research centers themselves confirm a trend that needs to be addressed immediately. Here is what we read in a recent study by the CGIL itself: "Poor work (and more generally low wages) is one of the main Italian problems.[...]Among the causes of low average wages in Italy[are]the use of part-time work, contractual insecurity and job discontinuity.[...]In 2023, the average annual gross wage in the private sector stood at 23,662 euros."[1]Table 1: Average annual gross wage (in euros) in the private sector (excluding agriculture and domestic sectors) by type of contract and working hours, 2023.
Looking at the average wage broken down by contract type (permanent, fixed-term) and working hours (full-time, part-time), even more terrifying data emerges: fixed-term and part-time workers earned gross annual wages of EUR10,302 and EUR11,785, respectively, in 2023. But the overall situation, even for permanent workers, is equally terrifying. Examining the distribution by annual wage bracket in 2023, over 10 million private sector employees (62.7%) fall into the brackets earning less than EUR25,000 gross annually, of which over 6.2 million (35.7%) earn less than EUR15,000 gross annually.
Table 2: Number of private sector employees (excluding agriculture and domestic sectors) and percentage incidence by class of annual gross wage amount (in euros), 2023
The employment situation, particularly for the new generations, is also tragic.[2]Over half of young Italians are neither working nor looking for work. The numbers for the third quarter of 2025 are clear: out of approximately 12 million young people between the ages of 15 and 34, 5.277 million are employed, 190 thousand fewer than in 2023; the unemployed are 610 thousand, a decrease of almost 30 thousand; but the inactive have exceeded the 6.1 million mark, an increase of 235 thousand units compared to twelve months earlier (+4.0%). For the first time in years, more than half of young Italians in the 15-34 age group are not part of the workforce: they are neither working nor looking for work. The contraction in youth employment in the third quarter of 2025 does not affect everyone in the same way: the decline is clear among those with a university degree or postgraduate qualification, decreasing in all geographical areas. In Central Italy, the decline was 11.8% (from 333,000 to 294,000 employed), in the North 8.9% (from 886,000 to 808,000), and in the South 2.0% (from 352,000 to 345,000). High school graduates, on the other hand, showed greater resilience: slight growth in the North (+1.3%) and more modest declines in Central Italy (-3.5%) and Southern Italy (-0.6%).
This data is presumably due to the fact that the labor demand expressed by companies in the second half of 2025 is oriented towards qualified professions in the service sector, specialized workers, and technical operational roles, categories for which a technical diploma is often the most suitable qualification.
Highly specialized intellectual professions, which employ the majority of graduates, have seen a 12.4% overall decline in hiring. The Italian manufacturing system, at this stage, rewards practical skills and punishes those who have invested in academic careers without clear technical opportunities. Furthermore, an analysis of employment rates between men and women paints a contradictory picture within the ongoing gender gap. The overall gap between men (49.5%) and women (37.9%) stood at 11.6 percentage points in the third quarter of 2025, but the distribution shifts dramatically based on educational qualifications. Among young graduates, the gender gap almost completely disappears: a difference of only 0.6 percentage points in the employment rate. Among high school graduates, the gap rises to 18.2 points, and among those with only a middle school diploma, it reaches 16.7 points. For young women with medium-to-low qualifications, the Italian labor market remains structurally closed. Despite strong demand in services, commerce, and tourism and hospitality sectors where women are traditionally prominent businesses continue to discourage women from joining, due to the poor quality of contracts offered, involuntary part-time work, and poor work-life balance. As the March 2026 report on the gender gap in employment also highlights, only 36.7% of permanent hires are women, compared to 63.3% for men. Adding to this already critical picture is an indicator rarely cited in aggregate analyses: the long-term youth unemployment rate, defined as those who have been unemployed for more than 12 months.
In the third quarter of 2025, this figure rises to 4.3% among young men (+0.7 percentage points compared to 2024) and to 5.1% among young women (+1.4 percentage points). The increase among women is almost double that among men. Prolonged unemployment leads to a progressive weakening of skills: the longer one remains out of the labor market, the more difficult it becomes to re-enter. Those who remain unemployed for more than a year risk losing their skills, professional networks, and confidence in their abilities. This phenomenon is particularly serious because it is developing silently, obscured by aggregate averages that show an overall declining youth unemployment rate.
Faced with this extremely sad and complex social situation for the majority of working people, particularly the younger generations and women, the classic rhetorical question arises naturally, particularly for the CGIL leadership. Why, following what the trade union research centers themselves are saying and the major statistical agencies confirm, is there no effective union struggle on these issues, but instead we continue to toy with legislative proposals and signature drives that will inevitably prolong our organizational asphyxiation? Why do we continue to abandon a unified and widespread struggle for wages, further dividing categories, which are inevitably affected by the different balances of power in different industrial, commercial, and service sectors and in different market conditions, including public sector workers?
Why not wage a general battle for a new automatic wage defense tool against inflation other than the clearly ineffective IPCA index, even going as far as canceling the 2018 Factory Agreement?
Not only are these issues not on the union's agenda, but the school workers' contract for the three-year period 2025-27 has just been signed, even by the CGIL leadership. It follows the restrictive contract for the three-year period 2022-24, which rightly was not signed and which provides for a EUR140 raise. At the same time, the new contract for the credit sector is being launched jointly with CISL and UIL and the independent unions themselves, which otherwise hold the majority, for the three-year period 2026-28. This contract demands a EUR518 gross monthly raise at the average level (3A4L). This increase comes on top of already high wage levels and does not affect marginal sectors, as this sector employs over 270,000 people. How can real solidarity be developed among the working class if wage and therefore social disparities are exacerbated rather than leveled out?
We have never believed in conspiracies or even bad faith, but someone will have to answer. No one can hide behind ignorance. This tragic situation exists within the living body of the working class and among the younger generations, and if we add to these the 16.3 million pensioners with an average monthly income of EUR1,253 (data from the first nine months of 2025) but of whom over 53%, or approximately 9 million former workers, earn less than EUR750 per month, the social situation is virtually clear, as should the social block to which a resistance structure should respond.
And what about the battle over shorter working hours for the same pay? This would be the only real battle to ensure that the massive and constant introduction of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, does not lead to a constant reduction in employment levels, merely increasing productivity and thus exploiting the workers who remain employed. In reality, except in a few limited sectors of the credit industry (Intesa San Paolo), where second-level bargaining reduced working hours to 36 hours instead of 37.5, but shaped them into four 9-hour days instead of 7.5 hours, in the metalworking sector, the latest contract only provided for a joint national commission, effectively leading to a real increase in hours worked. This agreement included and accepted an expansion of working-hour flexibility, with an increase from 80 to 96 hours per year for multi-week work, allowing for a maximum of 48 hours per week. Any 16 hours in excess of the initial 80 hours are increased by only 8% and are not paid as overtime.
Furthermore, it was agreed to raise the limit between multi-weekly work and exempt overtime hours to 128 hours. This limit is not increased as overtime, but only 8% above the standard hours for companies with more than 200 employees, and a whopping 136 hours for companies with fewer than 201 employees, i.e., the smallest ones. Furthermore, of the 13 days of paid leave (PAR), only 5 of which were available to companies, for any collective closures or periods of planned layoffs, an additional two days are available to the company, bringing the total to 7. Thus, we have given the employers an additional 16 hours at our disposal. And all this in a sector like metalworkers, where unionization rates are still generally high and widespread, while in other sectors, particularly services and logistics, the eight-hour workday is still an achievement yet to be concretely defined. If we link this situation to the analysis of the wage data presented above, it is clear that the social and regulatory condition of the working masses is still severely deficient and fragmented into a thousand rivulets that effectively impede any solidarity and possibility of redemption and emancipation.
Our organized presence as class struggle militants within workers' resistance structures is an open criticism of these failed strategies of the union leadership.
Note
[1]The wage issue and low wages in Italy: Study by the Economics Office of the national CGIL, «CGIL», 24/05/2025 ( https://www.cgil.it/ci-occupiamo-di/economia-e-sviluppo/la-questione-salariale-e-le-basse-retribuzioni-in-italia-o6bwe7km ).
[2]Report CNEL - Unioncamere with Istat, focus on the condition of young people in the job market, «Ministry of Labor and Social Policies», 02/25/2026 ( https://www.lavoro.gov.it/pn-giovani-donne-lavoro/comunicazione/notizie/report-cnel-unioncamere-istat-condizione-giovani-mercato-del-lavoro ).
The data in the tables are taken from the aforementioned CGIL study based on INPS data.
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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