Public sector and knowledge workers strike against widespread cuts

In December 2009, the General Confederation of Italian Workers (Cgil) staged a general strike, representing workers in the public sector and knowledge-intensive services. Students and representatives of contract university researchers also took part. One of the reasons for the strike was the cuts in funding allocated to the education and research sector. Cgil is demanding greater economic resources for the renewal of collective agreements and precarious workers.

On 11 December 2009, a general strike announced by the Civil Service Union (Funzione pubblica, Fp-Cgil) and the Federation of Knowledge Workers (Federazione lavoratori della conoscenza, Flc-Cgil) was held. The initiative followed another general strike held by the General Confederation of Italian Workers (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Cgil) in April 2009, in protest against the government’s policies to counter the effects of the economic crisis and against the agreement on reform of the country’s collective bargaining system (IT0905029I, IT0904029I).

Students and representatives of university researchers without a secure employment contract also took part in the strike. The main demonstration was held in the capital city Rome, where clashes broke out between demonstrators and the police. According to the Civil Service Department of the Ministry for Public Administration and Innovation (Ministero per la pubblica amministrazione e l’innovazione), 9.7% of public sector workers joined the strike; Cgil, however, claimed that the figure was between 50% and 60% of public sector workers.

Reasons for strike

The principal reasons for the strike were the trade union’s dissatisfaction with the government’s policies concerning Italy’s public services and knowledge-intensive services . From Cgil’s point of view, the reforms implemented by the government had drastically reduced economic resources and personnel, creating a critical situation in many public services and increasing the number of ‘precarious workers’. The trade union asked the government to consider the public services and knowledge-intensive services sectors as crucial for tackling the ongoing economic crisis, by adopting policies targeted at investment in schools, research and public services.

More specifically, Cgil attributed its decision to take strike action to the:

• insufficient funding allocated by the draft budget law (in Italian, 1.8Mb PDF) for the forthcoming renewal of collective agreements, and the failure to solve the problem of the increased numbers of precarious workers in universities, schools and the public services;

• reduction of economic resources and personnel in universities and schools due to the provisions of Law 133/08 (in Italian). According to Cgil, funding for universities in 2010 will decrease by about 17% to 18% compared with 2008. Thus, the situation of many universities struggling to cover their management costs will become untenable. The trade union also criticised the effects of Law 133/08 on the school system, which has worsened the quality of educational delivery, increased workloads and exacerbated bureaucratic delays;

• plans to reorganise the university system, as envisaged by the draft law (in Italian) approved by the Council of Ministers on 28 October 2009. Cgil criticised three points in the draft law, in particular: the restructuring of university governance bodies, the elimination of tenured researchers and their replacement with researchers on fixed-term employment contracts.

Main demands

Trade union demands

Against this background, Cgil demanded that the government should:

• grant sufficient and suitable resources for the renewal of collective agreements;

• stabilise the position of precarious workers and devise a multi-annual plan for the recruitment of personnel;

• cancel the reductions in economic resources and personnel, as envisaged by Law 133/08;

• withdraw the draft law on reorganising the universities.

Demands of students and researchers

The students and representatives of researchers under precarious contracts agreed with Cgil’s arguments against both the draft law on reorganising the universities and the reduction in funding stipulated under Law 133/08. In particular, according to the students and researchers, the draft law on universities:

• does not resolve the problems of workers under precarious contracts and the generational turnover at universities, thereby increasing the discrepancy between those protected and unprotected by the social security system;

• does not affect personnel recruitment procedures and their ‘clientelistic’ practices;

• reduces the level of democracy in the academic system and undermines the right to study.

The main demands of the students and researchers included:

• an extraordinary plan for the recruitment of university personnel;

• strong investment in education and research;

• a new welfare system based on the continuity of income and access to social services.

Strike criticised by government and other trade unions

The two other trade union confederations – the Confederation of Workers’ Unions (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori, Cisl) and the Union of Italian Workers (Unione Italiana del Lavoro, Uil) – strongly criticised Cgil’s decision to call the strike. The Cisl-affiliated Civil Service Union (Cisl Funzione pubblica) claimed that the low turnout for the strike showed that the majority of workers did not agree with the decision to take strike action against the budget law; the union added that worker mobilisation only makes sense when the objectives are clear and exclusively of a trade union nature. The Confederal Secretary of Cisl, Gianni Baratta, emphasised the strike’s pointlessness given that the bargaining platform had not yet been announced and that the government had affirmed its commitment to allocating all of the resources necessary for the agreement’s renewal. These reactions confirmed the deep rift between Cgil, on the one hand, and Cisl and Uil on the other. The rift is related, in particular, to the agreement on reforming the collective bargaining system, signed in January 2009 by the government, the Confederation of Italian Industry (Confederazione Generale dell’Industria Italiana, Confindustria), Cisl and Uil.

The Minister of Labour, Health and Social Policy, Maurizio Sacconi, and the Minister for Civil Service and Innovation, Renato Brunetta, were also highly critical of the Cgil strike. Mr Sacconi emphasised the need to tackle the crisis through cooperation rather than conflict, claiming that Cgil was ‘an expression of an old world heading for extinction’. Mr Brunetta pointed to the low turnout at the strike and criticised the demonstration for its lack of significance. Meanwhile, the Minister for Education, Universities and Research, Mariastella Gelmini, invited Cgil to engage in dialogue on the issues causing the strike. However, she refused to talk to the students, on the grounds that they were not credible negotiators.

Marianna Epicoco, Fondazione Seveso