ITALY Rank and file organize against austerity
ITALIAN WORKERS have had enough of wage freezes and are no longer willing to accept the shilly-shallying of the union leaderships, who are busy managing the austerity. Strikes have been taking place since September in the transport sector and especially on the railways. (See back page for a report on the latest situation).
This article on the background to the growing militancy was first published in the paper of the French section of the Fourth International, Rouge, on November 25. ALEXANDRE LYS 6GE M sengers: chaos returns to ORE DELAYS for pasthe airports." No, that is I not a headline from an Italian tabloid. It was on the front-page of l'Unita, the daily paper of the Italian Communist Party, over a report announcing a four-hour strike on November 16. Called by the three unions in the Italian state airline, Alitalia, and the airports, the walkout paralyzed transport in Italy.
Since the beginning of September, many industrial actions have disrupted air transport. They have been focused on getting a new three-year contract in which the main issues are wages and the length of the working week. International Viewpoint • December 7, 1987
Air transport workers are the worst paid in the industry in Italy, and transportation itself lags behind other industries, such as engineering. A skilled airplane mechanic, with fifteen years seniority, earns about $1,000 a month for a forty-hour week.
The unions are calling for a monthly raise of about $300, along with a two and a half hours reduction in the work-week. The last contract dates back to 1981, but was not renewed when it legally expired. So the present one is two and a half years overdue, and real negotiations started only in June. Last year was marked by a series of struggles in sectors of the industry, in particular airplane maintenance, over working hours and staffing.
In September, a mobilization of air transport workers started with a series of very well supported revolving strikes that put the Alitalia management and the government on the defensive. During this struggle, there was a very strong upsurge of rank and file militancy, with the setting up of rank and file committees in some sectors.
The authority of the trade-unions is in fact sharply disputed, despite a high level of unionization (55 per cent). There have been no elections to the enterprise council for five years. Bogged down in co-management, the unions have refused to organize them.
Self-organization of railworkers
Other workers very much in the news have been train drivers and more generally train crews. Here the struggle was launched by the ranks and has led to six strikes that brought out an average of 95 per cent of the workers concerned. The train drivers are also strongly unionized. But, facing the hesitations of the union leaderships, they have formed a united coordinating committee. They are threatening to call a new 48-hour general strike at the end of
The railway workers are also fighting over wages and working conditions. Subsequently, a new coordinating committee representing other categories in the train crews, such as conductors, was formed.
In any case, in rail, the rank and file committees, the COBAS, are continuing to apply pressure. Lightning strikes organized by professional categories on a regional basis in this very decentralized country. One day, it may be the cleaners in Siena or the railworkers in Venice, another the conductors in Milan. In short, delays are multiplying on a rail network that already had a record number in ordinary times. Trains are shunted away from regions affected by stoppages.
Unlike France, Italian railworkers have a long experience of self-organization. The COBAS have existed for a very long time, having survived, like those in the engineering industry, since the Italian "Creeping May" of 1969. They also very often serve as local organizations for the three unions.
Finally, in education, after the strong mobilization in the spring against a contract signed by the ministry and the three unions, the fight led by the COBAS remains very substantial. Other strike mobilizations are
Today, after more than ten years of austerity accepted by the three main union confederations and all the parliamentary parties (from the Communists to the Social Democrats), workers' combativity is clearly reviving.
Distrust of the union bureaucracies
Italian workers are sick of having their wages frozen, especially when they have been regaled with stories about the virtues of Italian economic recovery, and they have not seen any benefits from this.
These initial struggles are also shaped by a distrust of the union bureaucracies, which are torn between their acceptance of austerity and the need to maintain their base among the workers. This is why struggles that were at first sectoral and won a lot of support have given rise to forms of selforganization and debates about the possibility of reforming the unions or the need for building new ones.
For the time being, the ruling coalition government, which includes the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Christian Democracy, is taking a tough line. It is threatening to push an anti-strike law through the Senate, providing for advance notice of strikes, during which time work stoppages would be illegal. Another bill would also ban walkouts on holidays and during vacations, as well as lightning
Finally, the government is threatening to use a law adopted under Mussolini against the railway stoppage projected for the end of November, making it possible to conscript the workers.
However, the government has been weakened by the repercussions of a recent referendum, in which nuclear energy was rejected, despite a campaign by the Christian Democrats. It has also been divided again over a finance law as a result of the drop in stock prices.
The three confederations called for a four-hour general strike against the finance law on November 25, impelled by the need to offer their base some perspectives. At the same time, they are trying to control it by proposing a "self-regulation" of strikes (even taking up certain provisions of the anti-strike law), which is to be decided on locally in the contract negotiations.
The revolutionary left is in the forefront of the fight. The teachers' COBAS, a conference of the railworkers' coordinating committees, of delegations of air transport workers, as well as of workers from other enterprises met on Sunday November 15 to issue a call for mobilizing. *
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meeting showed that. It began to take responsibility for questions going beyond the problems of specific categories. It posed political problems of management,
ITALY • NICARAGUA more general questions. But they have to be careful not to go too quickly in order not to cut themselves off from the broad masses of working people. *
E
LETTRA DEIANA, a leading member of the Italian section
US oil companies of the Fourth International, the
I LCR, explained to Cecilia Garmendla what happened at the recent
November 21/22 meeting of the refuse to handle • THIS WEEKEND, a national meet-
Cuban petrol in ing of the COBAS was held. What COBAS representing all categories took part in the meeting — teachers, railway workers, postal workers, subway workers. The airport workers now on strike could not take part, but sent a message of
The meeting was rather representative. There were 700 people there. The assembly decided to call a national demonstration in Rome on December 12 in defence of the right to strike. The government is trying to "regularize" the right to strike in services and the public sector. This national meeting was called by the teacher's COBAS to discuss that. A decision was made by the national commissions of the COBAS (including leaders of the various industries), so eliminating the need for a vote in the assembly, which would have been premature.
This decision has to be ratified in the various industries and in the local structures of the COBAS. In the coming weeks, the demonstration will have to be confirmed by the categories that have mobilized over recent months. I think it will be. This is a demonstration unaccompanied by a strike, with both a political and trade-union objective. Delegations will go to Rome on Saturday, December 12. • What debates took place at this coordinating meeting of the COBAS? The debate centered primarily around the question of the right to strike and on the linkup between the various struggles that have developed over these last weeks. But there was also debate over the selforganization of workers outside the union's bureaucratic structures.
The left current in the CGIL (Democrazia Consiliare, Council Democracy) took part in the meeting, as well as a left section of the CGIL teachers' union in Rome, which for months has given impetus to organizing what are termed "self-called assemblies," bringing together 300 to 400 • What are the perspectives for the movement? In the public sector and the services, there are very great possibilities for mobilization. New contract negotiations are coming up in many categories.
A vanguard is developing. Yesterday's
Nicaragua
E VERY MORNING from 6am on,
long lines of cars pull up front of Managua's Shell station a good while before it opens. Other filling stations are empty. For many days, Chevron, Esso and Texaco have not brought in petrol. Trucks come in every afternoon only at Shell stations and fill up the tanks so that every car in the daily lines can get a
Keeping in mind the worldwide boycott campaign against Shell's because of its trade with South Africa, it is an astonishing sight in revolutionary Nicaragua to see crowds of people going to their stations. But this patronizing of Shell is certainly not a reflection of any enthusiasm for South Africa among Nicaraguans. It is rather due to the fact that the three US companies -Texaco, Esso and Chevron — are refusing to bring Cuban petrol to their filling
Nicaragua has normally received its fuel from the Soviet Union, but in order to cover an acute shortfall in deliveries, the Cubans sent a full petrol tanker to the northern Nicaraguan port of Corinto. The US-owned companies have a rule that they cannot transport or sell Cuban products.The English- and Dutch-owned holding company Shell does not have the same rules, and at the moment is the only company in Nicaragua distributing the Cuban petrol.
Nicaragua is 100 per cent dependent on imports of petrol and diesel fuel. Earlier, Mexico and Venezuela, among others, provided some of this. Now, the Soviet Union has become the sole supplier.
Petrol is rationed. Every car owner is allocated 17 gallons a month (about 70 liters). Those who have specific workrelated needs can apply for more. And there is an extensive trade in petrol ration tickets on the black market.
From November on, diesel fuel will also be rationed, and diplomats and foreign aid workers will have to pay for fuel in dollars. The price is cheap - less than about 30 cents a liter. In cordobas, the local currency, the price is even cheaper - 1,000 cordobas. Petrol is refined at Nicaragua's only refinery, which is in Managua. It is owned
When the Sandinistas took power in the country in 1979, 168 US firms were operating in the country. Thirty of them were nationalized. Some wound down their activities, and now there are only about a dozen left, including IBM and Exxon. No new US companies have come in over the last eight years.
The Exxon refinery is in a key position in the Nicaraguan economy and industry. It processes 10,000 barrels of Soviet oil a day, but cannot touch the Cuban oil. So gasoline is shipped in already refined from Cuba. This is also of Soviet origin. Cuba gets only a tiny proportion of its petroleum from its own wells. The bulk comes 10,000 kilometers from the Soviet Union.
One of October's major stories in Nicaragua also had to do with gasoline. The minister for international cooperation, Henry Ruiz, made a new proposal for foreign investment in the country. In a speech to the Nicaraguan parliament he said that there were good chances of striking oil in Nicaragua, but "We will need $100 million and the sort of equipment that only a multinational corporation could have."
Paradoxically, it was the right-wing op position that was unhappy about the Sandinistas proposal to open the doors for multinational corporations. "They want to sell the fatherland," some rightists even
Until Nicaragua can pump its own oil, motorists will have to continue to line up in front of the Shell tanks, and save on gas, so that their 70 liters will last the whole month. The other filling stations will open up when the petrol from the Cuban tanker runs out and Soviet fuel is back in the tanks, refined by one of US industrialists' last bastions in revolutionary Nicaragua venerable Exxon refinery, which will soon be 25 years old. *
[From the November 12 issue of Klassekampen, paper of the SA, Danish section of December 7, 1987 • International Viewpoint
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