Italian general strikes for Palestine ‘must connect this rage with action’

Dock workers and supporters rally at the Port of Livorno  (Photo: @PaP Livorno)

Italian workers are preparing for their third general strike over Palestine this Friday.  

USB union member Roberto and university student Sara spoke to Arthur Townend about the state of workers’ organisation in Italy, the struggle around Palestine and the potential going forwards.  

Trade unions independent of the big three union federations have been at the forefront of workers’ action for Palestine. How does USB organise?

Roberto: USB union that was born in 2010, from mergers of grassroots unions. It is currently in the public sector, transport and logistics and in industry. But it also represents migrants and the unemployed.

USB has maybe around 300,000 members. And there are other unions like USB—SI Cobas, SGB and CUB. 

USB came from a break with traditional trade unions—CGIL, CSIL, UIL. The CGIL came from the Communist Party tradition. CGIL has around three million workers and two million retired workers—over five million in total.

The big unions were accomplices in the years of liberalisation of big companies in Italy which started around the 1990s. 

The USB is trying to give strikes their original meaning. That strikes are not just for show—they mean something, they are trying to obtain better conditions for the working class.   

Sara: The more institutionalised trade unions became detached from the working class. They became more like a class of bureaucrats and they started caring less about the everyday struggles. 

So USB was born in order to reclaim working class rights. 

Where does Palestine fit into this struggle?  

Roberto: The Italian working class did not try and organise for Palestine before the success of the general strike.

The main trade unions were very cold on Palestine at the start. 

For sure they talked about solidarity, but only in the past few months did they start to talk about genocide. And they haven’t put this solidarity in connection with working class struggle.  

So the problem for organising was the missing strength. Previously, if the CGIL trade union federation called a general strike, hundreds of thousands of workers would strike. If USB called it, only USB or only SI COBAS, not all of these people would go into the streets and go on strike. 

The spectacular thing about the general strike called by USB on 22 September, was that the dockworkers self-organized independently of the bureaucrats of the big trade unions.

In Genoa, dockers have autonomous port workers collectives and a big tradition of strikes in the ports of Genoa and others. 

CGIL, trade unions and some political parties came to the protests. But before strike they fought a little with the USB and the other smaller trade unions. CGIL leaders didn’t want to strike on the same day—they only wanted to protest.

And between these days there were blockades of port gates, rail stations, highways and airports.

“If they attack the flotilla, we block everything.” These protests were key to giving rhythm to the mobilisations.  

This success pulled CGIL behind the movement. This was the reason that the USB and CGIL decided to strike together on 3 October, because of the strength of that movement and the working class.  

But the next general strike of 28 of November will not be united. CGIL has called a separate general strike on 12 December.

Is there struggle elsewhere? 

Roberto: The metal workers are maybe the most combative sector of the working class.  

The manufacturing workers’ section of the CGIL—FIOM—is much more conflictual and radical. They have big traditions from the Communist Party. 

I think this is why unions, such as USB, are smaller in that sector, because there’s a big radical movement. 

But there is also the industrial jobs crisis in Italy. The facts show how lots of companies that close convert to producing weapons. 

For example, here in Tuscany, there’s an industry of electro-domestics—home machines—which closed. There are some proposals from Leonardo, the main weapons company in Italy, to convert this industry into weapon industry.

In Leonardo in Puglia, in the south of Italy, a sector of workers of Leonardo started a petition to stop the production of weapons to Israel. 

So I think that manufacturing sector of workers are joining the Palestinians and fighting the rearmament problem. 

Given what’s happening in Palestine, and USB’s militancy and organising the general strikes, are workers turning towards USB? Is there an increasing level of struggle?  

Roberto: Overall, the situation of political consciousness and participation is not very high. There are lots of working class people showing solidarity with Palestine.

But the working class’s political level here in Italy suffered the blows of a regression in terms of workers’ rights in the last 20-30 years.

So we have to look to see what happens on 28 November.

We are also trying to link the peace deal and the genocide with the rearmament of Europe and to cuts the public utility sectors and wages. 

Sara: After 7 October, the people that showed solidarity to Palestinians were workers, students and movements that were already radicalised. 

But as the genocide became more obvious, it was no longer only people that work in the public sector, such as teachers and workers in health. I think that more people have connected to Palestinians, and they joined the strike as well.

Roberto: This is the spectacular thing that happened in Italy—students and workers, in front of the violence, came in contact with imperialism and these wider problems for the first time.

But for the working class as a whole, we have to let them understand that they have to connect this rage with working class action.

So as working class activists we have to get people to have a higher level of consciousness of the connections between our industry and the imperialist violence.