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.

2025, therefore, will most likely be a year of strong industrial crisis for Italy and for the whole of Europe. In the increasingly heated international competition, the EU countries have arrived in strong oxygen debt compared to both China and the US and are lagging behind in all the leading sectors of the production system, starting with the automotive sector. For decades they have relied on low-wage policy and the export economy, but today that exporting has become much more complicated and that markets are in sharp contraction do not have many ways out.

Draghi has long proposed his recipe: to strengthen European technocracy by majority voting and investing in security, starting with armaments, and in strategic sectors. It is the idea that political and authoritarian capitalism is needed, that overcomes the rule of law and promotes a strong interweaving between large enterprise and state bodies, and prepares the EU to fulfill the role of great power. A doctrine that seems to inspire the whole West and that in Washington takes the form of the DOGE, the new Department for Administrative Efficiency, led by Musk and created by Trump, to put the whole public administration under the control of the large private company.

Draghi’s proposal is affected by the decision to bind itself to the West’s chariot, the will of the US and the dynamics of the strongest European economies, which is exactly the choice that has condemned our country to a condition of subordination. In this proposal there is an undercontivity that is not made explicit, namely that the only way to withstand the very strong international competitiveness is once again the compression of wages and the privatization of everything that can be taken from the public economy.

This proposal, for now the only organically formulated on a continental scale, which collects the approval not only of the European Commission but also of the Meloni government, is destined to clash with numerous unknowns. First, the effects of the new US leadership, which portends a less friendly relationship than in the past with European countries and the desire to establish relations with individual states rather than the EU. Then the political instability that is affecting the major members of the EU itself, Germany and France, which could lead to a real crisis of continental balances. And finally, but certainly not least, the effects of the social crisis that Draghi’s recipes are destined to produce and that could open up new scenarios.

The only certain data of this direction of travel in which we are channeled are the worsening of living conditions, the increase in social inequalities and the race to rearmament, with the growing involvement of our country within the scenarios of war. Meloni has just returned from a summit in Lapland in which she shared the renewed Italian interest in Africa and it is no coincidence that the military leaders of our army foreshadow the opening of new war scenarios on that continent.

There is no doubt that the crisis in which we are falling is not comparable to those we have experienced in the recent past. Its global character and the very strong interweaving with the shredding in pieces in which we have been immersed for two years is undeniable. The restructuring that is affecting the continental production system is therefore not dictated only by the needs of economic competition but also responds to geopolitical calculations and a logic of war. The saturation of world markets has ignited unlimited competition on a global scale and this is pushing the planet towards the proliferation of conflicts. The race to rearmament responds precisely to this dynamic: to invest surplus capital in a protected sector such as defense, where resources are ensured by state budgets, and support their army in the global clash.

In this situation, two other factors are moving: the repression of dissent and the strengthening of patriotic propaganda, both indispensable to guarantee a compactness of the internal front, while new “adventures” are being prepared to guarantee the interests of large Italian and European companies. While on the first front the new repressive laws operate such as the bill 1660, the under control of the judiciary, the projects of new constitutional reforms, the recurrent idea of making the law on strikes even more restrictive, the second front, that of propaganda, sweeps across the field and invests the world of culture, school, entertainment and private freedoms. A bad wind of cultural restoration blows hard in our country and shows its true face in the support that the Meloni government continues to give to Netanyahu.

Is there a way out of this blacker and darker future? And what role can our trade union organization play in reversing course?

The way out is a change of perspective, focus on the domestic market and the revival of consumption, the reindustrialization of the country, however, aimed not at exports or even war but at the growth of the well-being of our population. We must not conquer the markets but give an answer to the many difficulties of our country, from the prevention of natural disasters to public health, from the enhancement of our landscape and the many historical and cultural resources to the modernization of the railway transport system that in some regions almost does not exist, from the relaunch of social housing to the safety of so much of our public real estate system. And open us to economic exchange with all countries that are willing to do so on an equal footing, looking first of all south and on the shores of the Mediterranean

But the first point of this program, which today has no interlocutors in Parliament, is the vital battle to raise wages. Without a strong recovery in wages, pensions and social safety nets themselves, which have become for many now the only source of survival, there is no way to relaunch consumption and domestic market and thus trigger a change of gear.

Precisely on the salary, therefore, the crucial game of 2025 is played. It applies to public workers, where in the central functions there has already been a very heavy tear of the CISL and autonomous syndicalism that they have decided to sign down alone. It applies to local public transport workers, who have recently gone on massive and have been mocked by a pre-agreement on the contract that is worth 122 euros at maturity. And it applies to the railway sector where they are preparing to promote more flexibility in exchange for downward wages.

The salary lot actually invests all categories. From the sectors subjected to heavy restructuring, which are in particular those workers, to all the poor categories of services, which are those that in recent years have lost the most in terms of purchasing power, not even being able to take advantage of second-level bargaining. The bosses neglect to recount the fabulous gains of these years, their only concern is that the profit margins seem destined to contract in the coming years. And they run for cover by adopting the usual strategy, making us, for those who work, pay the cost of this umpteenth crisis. This explains downward contracts, the increase in workloads and hourly flexibility, the unwillingness to seriously address the issue of safety at work, the inclusion of new technology for the sole purpose of saving work rather than favoring a strong and generalized reduction in schedules.

A logical thread links the question of wages to the possibility of changing the address that the country has taken. First of all, it is a general question, it concerns all workers and therefore has the potential to be a common factor. It speaks of a very concrete question, the right not to be taken away from other resources by those who have enriched themselves in recent years and have done so by increasing the rate of exploitation. It proposes to invest in domestic well-being and the care of the territory rather than in armaments and conquest of foreign markets. And it alludes to the only way out of the crisis we are experiencing that is not the nightmare of a war scenario.

This is the challenge we face in the coming year and for which all our forces are worth investing.

It is the wish we make to all comrades, friends and friends, brothers and sisters of the Unione Sindacale di Base.

The post ITALY: USB on the Challenges Ahead for 2025 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.

The strike constitutes the necessary result and the dignified response of the working class against the rise in the cost of living, the inadequate measures, and the indifference of the Italian government.

We express our full solidarity with the strike on October 31st, and we call upon all public workers to massively participate and strengthen the struggle, sending a clear message to the Minister of the Public Service.

The WFTU calls for the militant class-oriented trade unions to express their solidarity with the USB and the working class in Italy and their struggles.

The post WFTU Solidarity Statement with the General Strike in Italy on 31st of October 2024 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.

We are following your mobilisation at the gates of the LARKO factory and we admire your determination to defend your jobs, your wages and the living conditions of your families in your community; your struggle goes even further, it is a signal to all Greek workers that it is always necessary to resist unitedly against the attempts of the local bosses of the governments and the multinationals to deprive the workers and the territory of their wealth for the benefit of the capitalists.

Only with a strong subjectivity and determination to move forward is it possible to defeat the plans of the bosses and the European Union to dismantle strategic production, to relocate where labour costs are lowest and exploitation is highest.

In Italy we are suffering the same attack in many industrial areas and we are responding with strikes and mobilisations.

Dear LARKO workers, in your struggle you can count on our solidarity and closeness until victory.

Long live the international working class
Long live the class struggle
Long live the workers’ resistance

The post Italy: USB Sends Solidarity with the LARKO Workers on the Road to Victory 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.