Union scabbing on behalf USI (Lazio)

18 posts / 0 new
Login or register to post comments
Last post
#1
Top
robot's picture
robot
Offline
Joined: 27-09-06
Apr 19 2011 05:16
Union scabbing on behalf USI (Lazio)

On April 15, the CUB and USI-AIT unions organized a general strike against the war in Libya. A couple of days before the strike to take place, the USI, a split from the USI-AIT from some 20 years ago, informed the governments strike commission that the USI was not at all organizing a strike. This appears to be interesting tactics of union scabbing in a different sence of the word, as it would have caused legal troubles for the USI-AIT which was forced to counter-inform the commission.

USI is constantly creating confusion by calling themselves "USI-AIT" though they do not belong to the IWA any longer. There stronghold once was more or less one single but big union at the Italian national statistics institute (ISTAT) in Roma, where they were the biggest union two decades ago. Thats why they were called USI (Roma) or USI (Lazio) in Italy. In the past they lost most of their membership and today count with a couple of hundreds of members in a few towns. They appear to be a part of a red and black coordination together with the spanish CGT and the British IWW.

#2
Top
MT
Offline
Joined: 29-03-07
Apr 19 2011 05:33

plain scum...

#3
Top
Steven.'s picture
Steven.
Offline
Joined: 27-06-06
Apr 19 2011 16:54

What happened with the strike in the end?

#4
Top
MT
Offline
Joined: 29-03-07
Apr 19 2011 17:05

USI-AIT say there were no bad consequences.

#5
Top
rata
Offline
Joined: 26-09-06
Apr 20 2011 14:20
robot wrote:
They appear to be a part of a red and black coordination together with the spanish CGT and the British IWW.

They are in fact secretariat of the red and black coordination, and are "fullfiling the task of leadership and coordination" of that network, during this year.

http://www.cnt-f.org/international/spip.php?article506

Organizations which are part of this network are CNT-Vignoles (France), IWW (UK), ESE (Greece), SAC (Sweden), CGT (Spain) and USI-Roma (Italy).

#6
Top
robot's picture
robot
Offline
Joined: 27-09-06
Apr 21 2011 07:16
rata wrote:
They are in fact secretariat of the red and black coordination, and are "fullfiling the task of leadership and coordination" of that network, during this year.

No need to worry about anything as long as USI (Lazio) is some sort of secretariat for anything. The one and only guy they have sent to IWA meetings during the past 30 years (as long as they have been a section) and who keeps representing the group on international meetings is sorta blatherskite and everything but an effective organizer. And even his international friends just call him “Mr. USI”.

(Reply to #5)
#7
Top
posi
Offline
Joined: 24-09-05
Apr 21 2011 07:21

Just for clarity, is what happened here that USI (Lazio) wrote to the strike commission saying that they weren't going to strike, and the commission got confused due to the same/similar names?

Or is the point that there was actually skulduggery, and that USA (Lazio) actively and purposefully intended to disrupt the strike of USI-AIT?

#8
Top
MT
Offline
Joined: 29-03-07
Apr 21 2011 07:48

they wrote in the name of USI-AIT that the yod not strike. it was at least for the second time in recent years. it is obvious it is a purposeful action.

#9
Top
Harrison
Offline
Joined: 16-11-10
Apr 21 2011 08:02
MT wrote:
it was at least for the second time in recent years. it is obvious it is a purposeful action.

i thought so, because i remember reading something back in december which described some past thing of the USI telling the italian gov there would be no USI-AIT strike

(Reply to #8)
#10
Top
Mark.
Offline
Joined: 11-02-07
Apr 21 2011 08:19
posi wrote:
Just for clarity, is what happened here that USI (Lazio) wrote to the strike commission saying that they weren't going to strike, and the commission got confused due to the same/similar names?

Or is the point that there was actually skulduggery, and that USA (Lazio) actively and purposefully intended to disrupt the strike of USI-AIT?

Both USIs call themselves USI-AIT (actually I think there's also a third USI that doesn't) so there's scope for confusion.

(Reply to #7)
#11
Top
Mark.
Offline
Joined: 11-02-07
Apr 21 2011 09:21
Tommy Ascaso wrote:
Yeah USI Roma/Lazio have continued to use the initials AIT despite no longer being part of an IWA section

Presumably the issue here is that USI-Roma don't recognise the decision to exclude them from the IWA. This was also the position taken by the CNT-F (see here for example) but at some point they made the common sense decision to drop the use of the AIT initials. No doubt it would make more sense for USI-Roma to do the same.

Anyway posi's question seems perfectly reasonable to me.

(Reply to #11)
#12
Top
robot's picture
robot
Offline
Joined: 27-09-06
Apr 21 2011 09:49
Mark. wrote:
Presumably the issue here is that USI-Roma don't recognise the decision to exclude them from the IWA. This was also the position taken by the CNT-F (see here for example) but at some point they made the common sense decision to drop the use of the AIT initials. No doubt it would make more sense for USI-Roma to do the same.

Yet there is one big difference. Whereas the IWA congress decided to recognize the CNT-F faction with secretariat at Bordeaux instead of the one with secretariat at Paris (albeit as far as I remember with only 2 yes, 1 no vote against many, many abstentions and “we-have-no-mandate”), the USI Lazio split left that same IWA congress with lots of yelling prior to any decision concerning the “Italian question”. So there was finally no need to decide for the congress, because the decision had alreay been taken by USI (Lazio) themselves.

(Reply to #12)
#13
Top
akai
Offline
Joined: 29-09-06
Apr 21 2011 12:11

The USI-Roma is more scummy than that. After again stating that the IWA does not recognize them as a section and demanding they stop confusing people, they deliberately decided to highlight their use of the initials AIT.

http://www.usiait.it/sede-roma/40-comunicati-roma/611-congresso-nazionale-dellunione-sindacale-italiana.html

Another interesting thing is that Italian platformists, who don't like to "interfere" with how USI-Roma calls itself, wrote a line of support of the April 15th strike. (It is on anarkismo and ainfos). Although this was organized by USI-AIT, they found it sufficient to write USI, which also leads to confusion. Also at least one of the redblack groups also writes just USI when USI-AIT does anything and I suppose it is rather deliberate.

#14
Top
syndicalist
Offline
Joined: 15-04-06
Apr 21 2011 16:42

Actually, all the USI's using the same name create their own confusions......as did CGT using CNT for as long as they did......this is just meant as an obswervation and not a political comment.

#15
Top
MT
Offline
Joined: 29-03-07
Apr 21 2011 22:49

you can send protest letters regarding the use of USI-AIT name by USI-Rome to the whole RnB wink coordination from priama akcia website (in english), see here:

http://www.priamaakcia.sk/index.php?action=soliMail&soliMail_id=17&lan=en

#16
Top
Mark.
Offline
Joined: 11-02-07
Apr 21 2011 23:14

I'm not sure how useful this is but there's more background on the three USIs (and other Italian base unions) on this alasbarricadas thread from a couple of years ago. The posts from Akelarre (who lives in Italy) are probably the most relevant.