The base unions in Italy

Thank you for posting this, there are surprisingly few english language articles about the Italian base unions.

Is the USI-AIT the IWA-AIT affiliate in Italy or the non-affiliated one? As I seem to remember both use -AIT in their name.

Mara Malavenda a leading member of SLAI-Cobas at Fiat Pomigliano was elected on the list of Rifondazione Comunista to parliament in 1996 but left the parliamentary group of PRC soon, she served as an independent MP up to 2001 and ran unsuccessfully under the label "Cobas per l'Autorganizzazione" for European parliament in 1999 and in 2005 for the PdCI (former right wing of PRC around Cossutta) ... can remember having read about SLAI-Cobas around 10 years ago, that they have a tendency towards "Anti-Americanism" and "Left-wing nationalism" but don't know if it is true

p.s.: unions which call themselves "sindacati autonomi" don't have anything to do with autonomous marxism, they are as far as I know either non-political or right-wing

yeksmesh

Is the USI-AIT the IWA-AIT affiliate in Italy or the non-affiliated one? As I seem to remember both use -AIT in their name.

Yes, it can be confusing. But the USI-AIT mention in this article is the actual USI, AIT Section.

USI-AIT: http://www.usi-ait.org Website of the AIT Section
USI-Roma: http://www.usiait.it Website of the split organization based in Rome.

yeksmesh

Is the USI-AIT the IWA-AIT affiliate in Italy or the non-affiliated one? As I seem to remember both use -AIT in their name.

I thought the USI that split from the IWA lost its industrial sections and only operates through a policy of labour forums?

very interesting stuff, thanks.
(however, this is listed now on the page of recent posts, but is almost 2 1/2 years old?)

These distinctions between the confusing variations of so-called base unions and what in the UK/USA are often referred to as 'business' or 'corporate' rather than say 'regime' unions are mostly still relevant I think?

Whilst I'm not a supporter of the ICP I noticed that this left communist organisation based mainly in Italy, more so than others in the left communist tradition, seemed to favour a form of syndicalist organisation as represented in particular by the last mentioned SI Cobas, which in terms of their support for the 'tactic of the united front from below' had at least some similarity in theory to the more recent specifically UK SolFed strategy if we ignore the different historical language usage as between anarchism and Marxist communism. See here for instance:
www.international-communist-party.org/English/TheCPart/TCP_002.htm#FirstCongress

So just to add this more current report of another SI Cobas struggle in Italy from a different left communist organisation that I am more sympathetic to:
www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2016-01-11/italy-solidarity-with-the-workers-of-bormioli-di-fidenza
There is a footnote briefly explaining their slightly different approach to the SI Cobas.
The struggle reported on relates to logistics workers which the 'Angry Workers World' group have reported on and analysed more extensively in their libcom blogs as for instance here:
http://libcom.org/blog/ditching-fear-warehouse-workers-struggles-italy-their-wider-significance-12072015

Also article by Loren Goldner in Insurgent Notes: http://insurgentnotes.com/2015/12/struggles-in-logistics-in-italy/

Now it seems a further division/split in the 'base union' movement in Italy involving the SI Cobas reported on and critically examined from a Left communist point of view here:
www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2017-03-21/two-comments-on-recent-events-around-sicobas-in-italy
Their basic point of criticism would presumably apply more broadly I think to anarcho-syndicalists such as SolFed ? but some of the details in relation to Italy are not so clear.

http://www.international-communist-party.org/English/TheCPart/TCP_007.htm#Guide

A Guide: To be used to Identify the (Unfortunately) Numerous Rank and File Unions in Italy

To date, in Italy there are the following rank and file unions, which we list below in decreasing size order: USB, CUB, SI CoBas, Confederation CoBas, SLAI CoBas. As can be seen from this brief note, the picture is characterized by fragmentation in many organizations more or less at war with each other. This is a very negative factor for the rebirth of the class union and an expression of the political opportunism of the various leaderships.

1) USB (Unione Sindacale di Base): born in May 2010 from the union between RdB (Rappresentanze Sindacali di Base, Base Trade Union Representatives), SdL (Sindacato dei Lavoratori, Workers’ Union) and a minority share of the CUB (see below). It is the largest among the rank and file unions and has about 40 thousand members. The majority of the leadership stems from that of the RdB, which was born in the late seventies and early eighties in some categories of the civil service (Social security workers, Firefighters). From 1992, when the CUB was born, RdB had federated with them, forming the RdB-CUB. But in reality the union has never been substantial. The birth of USB in 2010 on the one hand represented a step forward towards the organizational unity of basic unionism, on the other a step backwards, as it led to an organizational break with the CUB and to the beginning of a war between the latter’s leadership and that of the newborn USB. RdB was a trade union established by a large majority on public sector workers. USB in recent years has also started to develop in the private sector, forming organizational units in some engineering factories, thanks to the influx of a group of militants and officials from the left opposition of the largest regime union in Italy, i.e., the CGIL (Italian General Labor Confederation).

In the private sector, USB had also undergone a good growth among workers in commerce, but last February an important part of the union structure in this sector, about half of the national one, with its top manager, abandoned USB, accusing the summits of authoritarianism, and merged into the CoBas Confederation. This is not the first episode of breaking up within USB, since there were those of February 2016 that led to the birth of SGB and two minor splits during the first congress in 2010, which caused the formation of micro local trade union organizations: ADL in Varese and SIAL CoBas in Milan. The growth and strengthening of this rank and file union, therefore, does not seem easy, obvious and straightforward.

2) CUB (Base Unitary Confederation): born in 1992 following the expulsion in Lombardy – the most industrialized region of Italy – of a left wing of the second trade union of the country, the CISL (Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions). On the wave of a working-class struggle that took place in 1992-93, the CUB spread nationwide in various sectors of private business. From the very beginning, it has established a federative pact with RdB, with the intention of constituting a single and larger rank and file union, present in both the private and public sectors but, as mentioned above, things have gone differently. Over time, instead of developing, this union suffered a slow decline until, in 2010, due to the maneuver of the management group of RdB that led to the emergence of USB, the CUB suffered a severe blow, losing some pieces in favor of USB, which, judging by the mobilizations of recent years, seems to have further aggravated the decline. Its presence in the engineering factories, once scattered in many places, now appears confined to a few islands (eg Electrolux of Solaro, ILVA of Taranto). In any case we do not have reliable numbers about the membership of this union. In 2016 it signed a federative pact with SGB, a small trade union formed with a February 2016 USB spin-off, which mainly concerned the territorial union structures of Emilia, Lombardy and Venice.

3) SI CoBas (Intercategory Union of Base Committees): born in 2010 from a SLAI CoBas split, starting from two groups of members in logistics warehouses in the Milan area, it had considerable development in this sector. Today it has approximately 10 thousand members. It is developed above all in Lombardy and in Emilia, with minor groups in Turin, Alessandria, Genoa, Rome, Naples. It acts in concert with the ADB CoBas, which operates in the same sector in Venetia and Romagna. It is the only rank and file union to date able to deploy strikes that actually affect the productive activity of the sector in which it is installed at national level. The participation of its members in the demonstrations is very numerous, as in the last two cases, in Rome on 23 February and in Milan on 27 October last year, on the occasion of the general strike promoted by a part of the base syndicalism, succeeding in bringing to the streets a number of workers whom the other basic union organizations put together are hardly able to reach. So, despite having a number of members certainly less than that of USB, the ratio between this and that of the participants in the mobilizations is the best among the basic unions. The limit of this union lies in being confined, with very few exceptions, in the logistics sector and in organizing immigrant workers to a large majority. The second between these two factors, which certainly is also a merit, however, contributes with the first to shore up a sort of ghettoization of the union organization compared to the rest of the working class in Italy. It does not help to overcome this isolation – as we write in the introduction published here to the two leaflets distributed in Rome on 23 and 24 February – the idea of the national leadership to characterize the union in a party sense, based on the assumption that this should play a function of "substitution" in the face of the absence – in its view – of the communist revolutionary party.

4) CoBas Confederation: born in the mid-80s mainly among school workers and secondly in health care, developing then as a leopard scattered fur in other categories (eg post office, transport, urban hygiene), also in the private sector. Also this union has experienced a slow decline over time. In November last year the loss of a major part of the health federation was lost. In February, however, it received the influx of that part of the trade union structure of the commerce sector that abandoned the USB.

5) SLAI CoBas: born starting from 1992 in some big factories like the Alfa Romeo of Arese (Milan), Pomigliano (Naples) and Termoli, and SEVEL of Atessa. It also had a good organizational structure among the tram drivers of Milan, and was the protagonist in the great national mobilization of December 2002-January 2003, with wildcat strikes (outside the limits of the law). The latter group was expelled from the SLAI CoBas together with the majority of the Varese territorial structure, and formed the CoBas Workers Association, which then joined the CUB in 2010. The shutting down of the Arese factory, the bosses’ repression in that of Pomigliano, and finally the 2010 split that led to the formation of the SI Cobas, marked a drastic decline in this union.

There are also other small or very small organizations: in addition to the aforementioned ADL Cobas, SGB, ADL Varese, SIAL CoBas, there are also UNICoBas (mainly established among teachers), USI AIT (anarchist), USI (Roman splitting of USI AIT), the SOL CoBas (split from SI CoBas).

I'd add to this that relations between different unions can often be VERY bad. At the moment, relations have particularly deteriorated between USB and SI Cobas where things have descended into physical violence.

The end of last year also saw two separate 'base union general strikes': one at the end of October organised by CUB, SGB, Si Cobas, USI-(ex)AIT and Slai Cobas, and one at the beginning of November organised by USB, Cobas and UniCobas.

The internal politics seem quite murky and not got time to go into what I've understood so far but it verifies the info in Entdinglichung's post that it's having a negative effect on working-class organising in Italy.

Sorry, is there something new here?