Book notes
Dai COBAS al sindicato (From COBAS to the union) by Gigi Malabara, Data News, 1995 The "Base Committee" (COBAS) was formed at the Alfa Romeo plant in Arese (near Milan) in March 1990. COBAS demanded that the enterprise committee be elected directly by the work force, rather than nominated 'from above' by the heads of Italy's main trade union federations. In June 1990 elections finally took place, and COBAS candidates managed to break the monopoly of the main trade unions. In this book, Gigi Malabara, a worker at Alfa Romeo, and one of the leaders of the factory's COBAS movement synthesises the history of the movement, its main debates, successes and failures. His perspective is all the more interesting since Malabara is also secretary of the Rifondazione Comunista group at Alfa Romeo, and a regular collaborator of the revolutionary Marxist monthly Bandiera Rossa. Malabara argues that "it was the awareness, on the basis of day-to-day experience, that we were facing a change of epoch, and the awareness of the necessity to resist the attempts of FIAT management to completely sweep away the company's working class avant-garde, which the trade union federations had failed to tame, which pushed the trade union opposition at Alfa Romeo to create COBAS in Spring 1990. The force, made up of shop stewards and workers, organised itself above all in order to demand the election of the enterprise committee, which, for years, had been filled, by nomination from above, with the representatives of the trade union confederations. We needed an organisation which could organise the conflict with FIAT, and defend the future *The name chosen was a reference to the only precedent we knew: the mass movement among teachers in 1986-87. That movement was the high-point of a process of re-conquest of their political and collective bargaining autonomy by that category of workers. "The form we chose was that of a movement struggling for class objectives, and worker self-organisation. It based itself on numerous experiences of the Italian working class, including the election of workplace representatives by the entire work force. We also re-launched the debate on trade union unity, a debate which had been blocked and side-tracked ever since the 1970s. This project did not imply any 'adaptation' to a logic of defending the particular interests of a workplace or industrial group, but building one wing of a new, reconstructed, class struggle trade unionism. "In the public sector, critical sectors of the trade union movement demanded the right to participate in negotiations through the selection of representatives of all those who did not feel themselves to be represented by the CGIL, CIS and UIL. Others dashed ahead with political plans, claiming that the trade unions were out of date". But in the workplaces, the idea that we needed to rebuild an unitary, democratically elected representation of the workers to take part in the negotiations gained strength. People wanted to avoid the increasingly clear tendency for certain organisations to lobby for separate negotiation." In 1992 COBAS was a major force behind the creation of the allItalian Self-Managed Workers' Union (SLAI-COBAS). In Alfa Romeo elections for trade union representatives in May 1994, COBAS won 44% of votes, compared to 43% for CGIL, 7% for CISL and 6% for UIL. Dai COBAS al sindicato is published by Data News, the publishing house close to the Rifondazione Comunista Party, and carries a foreword by Rifondazione leader Fausto Bertinotti.
International Viewpoint n° 274 35
Ernest Mande
Study Centre in Amsterdam
This Centre has been created by Ernest's colleagues at the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam.
Ernest helped create the institute in 1982. Since then, hundreds of militants from all parts of the world have taken part in seminars, courses and conferences. All this was supported with a programme of publications in English, French and Castillian, and an unique library -25,000 books and pamphlets, in a wide range of languages
The Centre is an example of the kind of internationalism in which Ernest Mandel believed. Directed by the needs of its students. Enriching all those who participated in its activities.
Ernest himself was a regular participant in these events. He gave dozens of presentations, and participated in hundreds of debates. Much of this material is available for consultation and study on paper or audio tape.
But Ernest also came to learn. To meet with new militants from Eastern Europe, North Africa and South America, and test his ideas against their experience
The new Ernest Mandel Study Centre will continue Ernest's favourite activities. It will bring third world militants, socialists and feminists, to Amsterdam to discuss economics, politics, and building the revolutionary alternative. It will facilitate the translation of important texts into the languages tomorrow's revolutionaries will speak. And it will
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36 International Viewpoint February 1996 place Ernest's invaluable stock of articles, speeches and books at the disposition Of these new generations of militants
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