RON BLOM
Italian general strike
AFTER giving the employers years of relative social peace, which in turn allowed the latter to register significant advances, the Italian trade union movement launched a general strike on October 22 against a new budgetary law which represents an attack on the living standards of the workers (while at the same time pardoning those guilty of tax fraud).
The most iniquitous aspect of these measures is an increase in the bills paid by health patients for medical and clinical analysis, which reduces to a pitiful level the amount of their reimbursement for medical expenses. All this amounts to another blow against an already deeply troubled public health system.
Unhappily, the platform elaborated in response by the three confederations, the General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), the Italian Confederation of Free Trade Unions (CISL) and the Italian Union of Labour (UIL), is rather ambiguous and, above all, does not denounce clearly enough another. aspect of the anti-working class policy of the government of Giulio Andreotti; the "counter-reform" of the pensions system, which would considerably raise the retirement age.
The trade unions have not only given a rather ambiguous response to the grave threats made by the Employers Confederation of Industry (Confindustria) to indexation of wages, they have also demonstrated their willingness to negotiate and make concessions on this ground. Despite all this, the strike received widespread support nearly everywhere.