The Fiom demonstration in Rome was successful. “Today, writes the newspaper Liberation – Maurizio Landini is right – the perception is that something has already changed. The Fiom represents the highest and most organized point of clot of the social opposition. It is no coincidence that a multitude of collective subjects and movements have gathered around it, all different from each other and all strongly characterized by the themes that constitute an identity trait and the aim pursued. The demand for dignified living, working and study conditions, for inalienable citizenship rights, has been linked to a need for democracy. This articulated concert of subjectivity finds its center in the work”.
Beyond the individual political positions, which can also be very distant from each other, an enormous problem emerges, for everyone, not just for metalworkers, regarding the right to work, respect for the worker and his dignity. We ISF know something about it that in the last three years we have lost at least a third of the workforce. Companies have had good times and bad times without there being a valid defense of work. The unions have, at best, limited themselves to agreeing on a "good exit"
On the subject of the union crisis, Luciano Gallino wrote on 14 last year in Repubblica: “Anachronistic wreck of the industrial revolution. Superfluous as a contractual entity: collective labor agreements are outdated. Unable to represent the interests of global workers. This is what managers and politicians say about the union, as well as quite a few workers and employees. Added to all this are internal divisions and attacks against some organizations. So let's see some data.
In western European countries, between 1981 and 2007 trade unions, excluding the public administration, lost on average more than half of their members. In the same period, the share of wages in GDP fell by an average of ten percentage points. In Italy, where a point of GDP is worth 16 billion, it has dropped by twelve”.
And he continues: “These data show that in developed countries when unions are weak wages, along with other aspects of working conditions, veer downwards. Obviously it's worse in emerging countries”.
Completely abandoned to themselves are the so-called atypical workers, and there are many among the ISF, who "they would need to – concludes Gallino – of a powerful union of employees, which they really are; but the legislator kindly allows the company to apply the label of self-employed workers to them
