Socialist Action /April 2002
Three Million Workers Rally in Italy
to Protest Anti-Labor Legislation
By GERRY FOLEY
Three million workers and youth marched in Rome on Saturday, March 23,
in response to an attempt by the recently elected reactionary government
in Italy to give employers an unrestricted right to fire their workers.
It was undoubtedly the largest demonstration in the history of the country.
The march, called by Italy's largest trade-union confederation, the CGIL
(Italian General Confederation of Labor), was joined by about 300,000 young
people mobilized by the anti-globalization movement, a number similar to
that of the anti-globalization march in Genoa last July.
The rightist government headed by Giacomo Berlusconi, known as "il
commendatore" ("the commander") is seeking to change Article
18 of the labor code, which obliges employers to rehire unjustly fired workers.
The proposal would in effect give bosses the freedom to hire and fire as
they choose.
This is a basic goal of the international capitalist offensive called
the "neoliberal revolution."
The Berlusconi government, however, has a shakier political basis than
other rightist governments (or Social Democratic ones) that have set out
on this course. It includes former fascists and reactionaries that have
called for the separation of Northern Italy from the South, the so-called
League of the North.
The regime is headed by a speculative tycoon who is reputedly the country's
richest man, and whose business dealings have repeatedly drawn the attention
of the courts. It owes its election only to disillusionment with the rule
of former leftists (mainly the old Communist Party) who carried the ball
for the bosses but without Berlusconi's panache and promises. (He has pledged
to create large numbers of jobs through an adventurous public works program.)
The truculent rightist government has attempted to ignore the March 23
demonstration, but the CGIL is following up up with a call for a general
strike for April 5. And the following Wednesday, March 27, there were massive
workers demonstrations against terrorism, including one of 300,000 in Rome.
These demonstrations were really a rebuff to the government's attempt at
witch-hunting the union movement.
The government, particularly, the most right-wing forces within it,
has been trying to use the "war against terrorism" hysteria against
the trade-union and the anti-globalization movements.
The pretext was the murder of Professor Mario Biagi, the government official
directing the attempt to change Article 18. The assassination was claimed
in the name of the Red Brigades, a shadowy ultraleft underground group that
carried out political assassinations decades ago.
In response to the government's demagogy about terrorism, the demonstration's
organizers made opposition to terrorism and sympathy with its victims one
of the themes of the march.
The secretary general of the GCIL, Sergio Cofferati, told the 3 million
demonstrators, "Your presence is the strongest answer to terrorism."
They also called for a minute of silence in respect for Biagi and in protest
against his murder.
Nonetheless, the government is continuing to press its aggressive attempts
to stigmatize the mass protest movement. On March 27, Berlusconi declared
that "neither pistols nor the streets [i.e., demonstrations]"
would force the government to change its course.
Umberto Bossi, chief of the League of the North, along with Berlusconi's
minister of defense, called the trade-union movement "the ocean in
which the terrorists swim." On March 27, the same day as the latest
massive workers' marches against terrorism, the government imposed "special
security measures," supposedly to defend U.S. citizens and diplomatic
representations against "terrorist attacks."
Berlusconi chose the same day to try to raise a scare about undocumented
immigrant workers: "The mass immigration of undocumented workers can
create a dramatic situation, a pressure that could lead to war and situations
like Sept. 11."
Anti-immigrant rabble-rousing is also a specialty of Bossi and his League
of the North, except that they extend their racism even to southern Italians.
Instead of intimidating the masses, however, the right-wing threats of
Berlusconi and his sinister cohorts has already brought 3 million people
into the streets to defy his government. The attack he has led on the past
gains of the workers has united the entire trade-union movement against
him, forcing the Catholic CISL and the post-Stalinist UIL to break off negotiations
with the employers' organization, the Confindustria, and join the movement
for a general strike.
Berlusconi is a symbolic figure of capitalism in our time, like the bosses
of the Enron corporation in the United States. He has built an empire and
political power on parasitic speculation.
But like the Enron's declared worth of tens of billions of dollars and
its pack of bought politicians, his empire and his power are a house of
cards that can collapse if his bluff is called. And it looks like it is
being called, and that he himself has forced this by his need to push his
luck further and further, by the fact that he has nothing to base himself
on but his daring.
Moreover, Berlusconi's regime is no exception in the world today. In
an age in which the capitalists work more and more by smoke and mirrors
and live on their nerve, a lot of other capitalist rulers are running as
fast as they can on thin ice. The chances are increasing that they are going
to start taking falls. Berlusconi may be the first, but he is unlikely to
be the last.
Socialist Action /April 2002 |