Italy shows the way forward as workers shut it down for Palestine

On Saturday 4 October, around 1 million people marched in Rome against the genocide. This was one of the biggest demonstration since the Iraq War

Workers in Italy have been organising to shut down the country for Palestine.

They have called a number of general strikes, with millions of people taking to the streets earlier this month in solidarity with Palestine.

Fabio, a member of the Si Cobas union in Italy, discussed with Socialist Worker how workers are fighting back against genocide.

“There has been a rise in strikes in the days before the demonstrations, so there was a great expectation about the general strike on 22 September.

“They were mostly public sector workers, less so factory and industrial workers who participated in the strike. But still, I don’t think we’ve seen the same number for 15 years or so in Italy. Very, very big numbers and with many diverse kinds of actions.

“Because there have been mass demonstrations, blockades in the harbours, train stations, people are willing to say we need to fight. Not only demonstrate, but to put an obstacle, a real obstacle to the situation that is going on in Gaza,” he said.

“There were a lot of workers involved and then lots of people who were just there to protest around Palestine.”

Smaller unions like Si Cobas are leading the way on Palestine, but this has led to bigger unions calling for strikes too.

The general strike in September “was launched by the USB union and particularly by the harbour workers. But then all the smaller unions supported it.

“The factory workers, mainly in the CGIL, launched a strike of only two hours on the Friday before, which was an attempt to divide the protest. It worked in the fact that factory workers mostly didn’t strike—but there has been also a feeling of anger in the factories.”

But the participation of workers across Italy in a general strike on 3 October goes far beyond the organising ability of the smaller unions.

“I think the work that has been done in the past two years, of taking a position and striking, protesting for Palestine has been important because of the awareness it has raised. It also helped to show that it’s important to blockade production—so it shows workers are important.”

Fabio said, “People come into the streets with workers, there is a feeling that it is possible to change things.

“I think this is a widespread feeling now. But it’s going beyond the organising abilities of all our unions.

“And this raised a problem for CGIL and other big union bureaucracies. Many young workers from CGIL and those without a union struck, leaving their union behind.

“There are movements in the CGIL going beyond the leadership because there is the perception that something has changed in the political panorama. Again, it is a working class movement that you can’t ignore—and we always hope for that.

“When the workers move they can push the bigger unions. We will see if this happens, but right now there are some movements that are interesting.

“I don’t know if this will become concrete, but maybe parts of CGIL are willing to be involved, maybe even in some parts of the bureaucracy of the CGIL—which has not been the case at all in the past few years.

“But there has been a change in the level of consciousness. We hope that the strike movement will continue—but I think it has been a step forwards, a change from quantity to quality for the working class in Italy.”

Italy has shown how the working class movement for Palestine can strike a blow.

The international working class can learn the lessons of the resistance in Italy.

There are numerous challenges that British workers would need to overcome to be able to replicate action on the same scale. But Italy has shown the potential.

“In Italy, there are no real limitations on launching a general strike, whereas it’s harder in Britain,” said Fabio.

“With USB and other smaller unions launching the strike, they had a political position on Palestine already, and of course it’s a political thing to strike against your government. But to launch this strike there was no need to struggle within our smaller unions.

“It has only been a minority of workers on strike for Palestine before. But it was tactical. Harbour and logistics workers were blocking Israel in the ports.

“I think this pushed through the idea that it is not enough to demonstrate—you need to strike.”