Over 30,000 people took to the streets with USB to demand a class-based alternative based on peace and justice.The extraordinary national demonstration organised with the Disarmiamoli coalition group concluded in Rome, with over 30,000 people participating, including workers, young people, students, activists, and trade unionists.

The crowd shouted clear messages to the country: ‘No more war! No more rearmament! No more complicity with NATO, the arms industry or the genocide of the Palestinian people!’Today’s demonstration was an integral part of the national general strike called by USB on 20 June.

This strike united the struggle against rearmament with demands for higher wages, more rights and welfare to defend public health and education and save an industrial apparatus sinking deeper every month.

While the Meloni government continues European policies by pouring billions into rearmament and militarisation, ordinary people suffer: hospitals are collapsing, schools are being closed down, and deindustrialisation is desertifying territories while rents are skyrocketing.In this context, continuing to invest in weapons, military missions and aggressive alliances such as NATO — which is complicit in the genocide currently being carried out in Gaza by the terrorist state of Israel — is a political, social and moral crime that must be strongly denounced.

Yesterday’s demonstrations and protest initiatives throughout Italy, along with today’s large rally, confirm USB’s position as a trade union and class alternative, connecting the defence of social rights with the struggle against permanent global war.

The post ITALY: USB Holds Historic Day of Protest Against War and Rearmament first appeared on Labor Today.

Transport is the emblem of this disaster: from sectors that drove the general development of work and the country have transformed after years of wage cuts, wild liberalization, worsening of working conditions and precarity, to places from which you run away with their legs raised.

For some time we have been denouncing the fact that in transport the collapse of wages in Italy is also linked to two other factors too often underestimated or ignored: the progressive expulsion of any form of democracy, which is now affecting all sectors in a transversal way, combined with the continuous reduction of the spaces of strike thanks to an iniquitous law and widely used to protect the employer’s parties.

In recent months, contracts have been renewed in the sectors of seafarers, ports, logistics and bus, tram and rail drivers with increases of less than 6% on average per year compared to a full-year inflation of more than 17%, leaving more than 10% in the pocket of companies.

All this happened without discussing a platform first with the categories and without submitting the contract to a referendum. The negotiation of the Air Transport contract has even reopened without even having been the slightest consultation, not even by mistake.

If, as in the most striking case of the railway workers but also of local public transport, the owners ignore strikes (the most democratic form of participation of workers) participated from 60 to 80%, because the rules impose limited durations, the guarantee of 50% of activity and hallucinating rarefaction, in the end it is advisable to unload on the users the inability to listen to the requests of the categories.

It is incredible how in the largest Italian company – the FSI Group- or the largest public transport company in Europe – the Atac of Rome-, the RSU have expired for more than 7 years but the renewal is prevented while the practice everywhere is now the appointment of the Company Representations from above.

The transport sector is only the most visible tip of the iceberg than what happens to work in Italy.

Convincing the working class it has no right of opinion or speech and that the strike is now a sterile exercise as useless is the great weapon that has been put in hand for too many years to those who take away our wages from the governments of all colors and from those unions now reduced to notaries in defense only of their hegemonies and prebends. And then we’re surprised that people don’t vote anymore.

It is time to take back the word, the democratic practice in the workplace and rebuild the space of conflict without which the contractual demands become almost alms.

For this reason, we will bring the patrimony of discussion of the assembly of all transports held in Bologna inside the square of April 5 in Rome for the salary and against the rearmament.

The post ITALY: Lost wages, Denial of Democracy and Conflict in the Workplace—USB Transport will be in the Streets on April 5 for Wages and Against Rearmament first appeared on Labor Today.

The future beyond the factory. An assembly created with the aim of overcoming the purely corporate dimension of delegates and delegates; to break the encirclement and master conditioning that leads to corporatism.

The workers’ sectors of the ports and logistics, which are also part of the value chain, made their contribution to the meeting. An axis of work, that of the workers’ category, which aims to rebuild the protagonism and contractual strength of the working class, today divided by the organisation of work, bent by the sell-out and sharing policies of CGIL, CISL and UIL.

Both the speeches and the final document approved by the assembly highlighted how the industrial crises, despite their general dimension, have been kept far apart, leaving a free hand to the bosses, who are now preparing to pass on to the workers and the country the costs of industrial restructuring and those of an absent and bankrupt industrial policy.

The constant fall in wages, the loss of purchasing power, the crisis in the industrial sector, technological innovation, war and the environmental problem are closely linked.

Rearming Europe, or the European Defence Plan, updates Mario Draghi’s industrial conversion plan for the worse, that’s another 800 billion taken from the wealth produced by the workers and allocated to the war industry and the military complex.

The assembly launched the mobilisation against the war, for the renewal of contracts, wages and the welfare state, a mobilisation that will take place inside and outside the factories, with banners, leaflets, assemblies and strike initiatives. In a country plundered by banks and multinationals that have taken and continue to take resources from welfare and infrastructure and force already low wages to remain below inflation, Raise Wages Lower Arms addresses the entire working class.

A path of struggle that converges and crosses the second and important date of 5 April in Piazza Santi Apostoli in Rome, where a big initiative in the square will see the entire USB confederation demanding increases in wages, pensions, the minimum wage, reduction of working hours, no more contracts, no more precariousness, we need public investment in housing and infrastructure. No to rearmament and no to war.

The post ITALY: The National Assembly of the USB Industry Launches the Mobilization for Wages and Against European Rearmament first appeared on Labor Today.

This strike, called by our affiliate, USB, is a bold and necessary response to the devastating policies of the Meloni government and the European Union that deepen social inequalities, exacerbate poverty, and intensify exploitation. These policies prioritize the profits of banks and monopolies, fuel militarization, and undermine democratic freedoms and workers’ rights.

The WFTU unequivocally condemns the Italian government’s actions that align with the broader imperialist agenda, which promotes war as a solution to the capitalist crisis. We denounce the allocation of resources to the war economy, the escalation of military spending, and support for imperialist interventions, including in Ukraine and Palestine, while workers and peoples are left to suffer under precarious conditions, starvation wages, and deindustrialization.

The struggles of the USB reflect the just demands of the Italian working class and the broader society for fair wages, decent work, quality public services, environmental protection, and genuine democratic freedoms. The situation that the Italian working class faces, highlight the urgent need for resistance against the attacks on fundamental rights, the privatization of public goods, and the assault on civil liberties.

We call upon all militant class-oriented trade unions and progressive forces worldwide to express their solidarity with the USB and the working class of Italy. We reaffirm that international solidarity is our strongest weapon in the struggle against imperialism, exploitation, and war.

The post The WFTU Expresses Solidarity with the General Strike in Italy on December 13th first appeared on Labor Today.

Our Choice is Very Clear and Consistent

Faced with an important contractual season as never before, in a phase of uncontrolled increase in the cost of living due to the crisis and war policies, if the government comes to the table with resources that cover only one third of what salaries have lost in purchasing power due to inflation, the task of a trade union organisation worthy of the name is to denounce all this, break the consociative climate and be consequential in its choices.

Outside a table emptied of value, inside the workplace alongside those who carry on the public administration, guaranteeing rights, services and the welfare state.

The strike of 31 October grows in the attention and consideration of women and men workers,
confirming the centrality of our choice and the reasons that led us to leave the negotiating table.
A wave of indignation and discontent that certainly cannot be overcome by the Government’s choice to make available further resources for a paltry 0.22% (by the way, not for everyone) that leaves the loss of purchasing power of wages at 10%.

Today it is more necessary than ever to invite all public workers to strike, to remind them of the fundamental role they play, to offer them coherent platforms and perspectives.

Building conscious struggles is the most important goal: the square on 31 October will shout these watchwords to the Minister of the Public Service.

The post ITALY: USB Declares General Strike on 31 October first appeared on Labor Today.

We will be present as all the years at the procession of the memory of the massacre of August 2, 1980 in Bologna: a manifestation of pain and anger against the plots of the “strategy of tension”, with their trail of blood involving fascists, the P2 Masonic lodge, apparatuses of the State, up to NATO.

Decades of ousting and cover-ups that have not spared even to tarnish the Palestinian resistance in order to hide instigators and executors.

We will be there because, yesterday as today, it is important to remember and understand that we must resist against the further authoritarian drift of this government with its security decrees and its batons; because we must resist the war propaganda that all wants us all and all enlisted with NATO, against the enemy on duty and in favor of those who, like the Israeli government, continue with impunity to make massacres in the Middle East, blowing on the fire of a world conflict.

USB Bologna

The post ITALY: USB Bologna Marches in the Square for Remembrance of the Massacre on August 2, 1980 first appeared on Labor Today.

USB reiterates its opposition to the war economy put in place by the Meloni government, in particular we denounce support for the Israeli government while the latter commits genocide in Gaza. Tuto impoverishes the country and the workers, as well as making Italy complicit in massacres like the one underway against the Palestinian people.

Our country is experiencing an external war, but also internal, to stop it USB has solutions: raising wages and protections for workers, in particular in terms of health and safety at work. We want increases of at least 300 euros in the paycheck, a legal minimum wage of at least 10 euros, reduce the hours for the same salary on 4 days of work per week, the introduction of the crime of murder at work.

Attached is the document approved by the assembly.

—–

The National Assembly of USB delegates and delegates that met in Rome today May 16 in the Auditorium of the National Library denounces the dangerous bellicist drift taken by the governments of the European Union and the Italian government led by Meloni. Increased military spending, support for the arms industries, repeated military aid shipments to Ukraine, the leadership of the Aspides expedition to the Red Sea, and support for Netanyahu’s genocidal government are all signs of a willingness to drag our country into a very dangerous spiral and that is already heavily affecting our economy. USB declares that not a penny or a soldier must be made available to this spiral and that our country must pull out of every military adventure and support the stop to the genocide of the Palestinian people and its right to a land and their own self-determination, as invoked for a long time by the international community.

Also because of these policies of war the economic conditions of our country are worsening. The government’s employment data is false and only constitute smoke in the eyes of the public. The growing impoverishment that we are suffering is the result of a policy of containment of wages and widespread precarization that date back to the last decades but that this government is increasing further, together with the constant cut of the Social State, starting from Health.

For this reason, the assembly recognizes itself in the need to launch a campaign to fight for the salary that points to: increases on the basis of at least 300 euros as a recovery on the cost of living, increases in the next contractual renewals that take into account the strong profits accumulated by companies and that do not represent the umpteenth opportunity to increase the flexibility of work and exploitation, restoration of a mechanism of automatic indexing of wages and pensions, a minimum legal wage on the minimum tables.

In the face of the strong technological restructuring already underway, which will also be supported by the European funds of the PNRR, it is urgent to promote a strong reduction in working hours that includes the week of 4 days of work and a working day of no more than 7 hours and 1-2 to ensure the protection of employment and a life not subjugated to the needs of companies. Machines need to reduce fatigue and not just increase productivity.

To stop the wave of massacres that is bloodied workplaces, drastic measures are needed that reverse the trend: to pass a law that introduces murder at work, empower RLS more and restore a far less extensive definition of procurement than the current one.

Continue to fight for the defense and relaunch of public services as an element of rebalancing of inequalities, proper to the capitalist system, and, more generally, for all the mechanisms of indirect wages, starting from the housing question with the reintroduction of the fair canon, in addition to the need for a million new social housing.

Finally, it is necessary to stop the precarization of work by abolishing the mandatory part time, to introduce the just causal to fixed-term work, to fight festive work and the proliferation of shifts, to bring back to the Publication of the P.A. that in recent years has been outsourcing and absorbing the much precarious that has been created.

On this general platform that wants to raise wages, reduce time, stop precariousness and give workers the power to safeguard health and safety at work, the Assembly of USB delegates and delegates opens a consultation campaign in all sectors and territories, with the aim of launching a season of mobilizations and struggles in the next autumn.

On June 1st USB will be in the streets in Rome on this platform and against the government of war, it will continue to be present and active in the mobilizations in support of the Palestinian people.

Unione Sindacale di Base

The post ITALY: USB in the National Assembly—Enough War Policies, We Want Higher Wages and Safety at work. On June 1 in the Streets against the Government first appeared on Labor Today.

Tomorrow’s strike constitutes a continuation of the previous militant initiatives and struggles such as a series of assemblies in the various Italian ports organized after February 27th, 2024 when USB proclaimed a national state of agitation in the port sector as well as while the port workers of PSA Genoa have been on strike since 2 April to obtain USB’s rights to participate in the elections of the terminal workers’ delegates.

 The international class-oriented trade union movement joins its voice with the struggling port workers in Italy and expresses its international solidarity with their just demands.

The post WFTU Solidarity Statement with the Port Workers Strike in Italy first appeared on Labor Today.

We need to act and mobilize against war starting from the workplace. As we need to rethink the economic development model to avoid the impacts of the effects of climate change, affecting the poorest areas of the planet.

The bosses continue to seek only their immediate profits, but those who work within the production and supply chains know well that the crisis is imminent, indeed it is literally already among us.

We must call it by its name: it is capitalism.

Wars are the expression of this, the inevitable confirmation of a model that places private interests at the center to the detriment of communities and workers. The destruction of the environment and the planet is simply the other side of this coin.

The crisis in the Middle East, the massacre of Palestinian People and the resulting tensions in the Suez Canal today directly touch our pockets, considering that 40% of Italian GDP is represented by exports.

Ports, logistics, production trade, the “value chain” sectors, are directly impacted from this situation in Italy and are already experiencing worrying slowdowns.

Connecting to all the generalized mobilizations already called to claim the immediate stop the genocide in Gaza, the USB Workers Category announce the first public initiative where discuss togheter the real triggers of the global crisis, conflicts, climate changes and the consequent impacts on the on the wages and living conditions of millions of workers.

For peace and environmental justice, we must continue to mobilize from below.

Together with the USB Workers Category, they will be present and contribute to the initiative:

• Giuliano Mariucci (Ottolina TV)
• Markos Bekris (PAME ENEDEP Port Union)
• Gabriele Rubini (Chef Rubio)
• Giorgio Cremaschi & Marta Collot (Power to the People)
• Rajeh Zayed (President of the Palestinian Arab Democratic Union)
• Riccardo degli Innocenti (Researcher)

On 10 FEBRUARY 2024 at 10.30 am at the “Music for Peace” in Via Balleydier 60, GENOA

Unione Sindacale di Base

The post ITALY: Channels of Conflict—Workers of the “Value Chain” Facing the Impacts of War and the Environmental Crisis. 10th February, Genoa first appeared on Labor Today.

We are not arms we are men, this is the slogan often shouted by migrant labourers.

Today these men wanted to launch a new challenge, not only to the bosses who exploit them, not only to the institutions that oppose them. A challenge also to all their brothers, TO GET OUT OF THE EXPLOITATION, TO BE PROTAGONISTS, TO CULTIVATE THE LAND FOR THEMSELVES NOT FOR THE PROFIT OF ANYONE ELSE. They decided to occupy two hectares of land, they decided to work it and sow it, they decided to harvest tomatoes, they decided to feel free.

A signal of hope not only to migrant labourers, but also to all those who want to give a signal of change, of reaction to the passivity rampant in the world of work. This signal must be picked up not only in Torretta Antonacci, it must be a signal that involves migrant workers and Italian workers in all the different regions of Italy.

Three million hectares of uncultivated and abandoned land in Italy, public land left abandoned with unpresentable reclamation and fostering interventions, it is time for uncultivated land to go into the hands of those who want to work it, under public control and cooperative management.

Let’s give strength to this idea, to this project, let’s invite all those who can lend a hand to the experience of the Torretta Antonacci labourers, to contact us, to reserve the bottles of tomato puree that will be produced in the coming weeks, to make available their knowledge and experience to bring this idea to life in other places.

The post ITALY: USB—THE LAND BELONGS TO THOSE WHO WORK IT!!! first appeared on Labor Today.