Politics
On struggle and government •
Maurizio Landini’s unfortunate timing
Yesterday, he signed an agreement that effectively backs Meloni’s stance on a fair wage, but today he is already back on the streets protesting against the government, just a metre from Palazzo Chigi. He is putting forward his own fiscal plan and has announced a general strike for 20 November, but he is not entering the building for the meetings between the government and the trade unions.
Yesterday, Maurizio Landini, together with CISL and UIL, signed an agreement with thirteen employers’ organisations which defines the ‘fair wage’ as that set out in the collective agreements of the most representative trade unions. This is Giorgia Meloni’s solution, not the statutory minimum wage advocated by the PD and CGIL. Grassroots trade unions have taken note of this and are saying, off the record, that the CGIL is ‘contradicting itself and helping Meloni’.
But for the secretary, the agreement is a good one. Might the leader of Italy’s largest trade union have something different to say about an agreement that leaves it to the confederations to determine, through collective bargaining, what constitutes a fair wage? Yet as early as this morning, Landini had reverted to being a militant trade unionist rather than a government-aligned one. Although yesterday he assured everyone that once his term at the CGIL is over he will ‘retire’, this morning he was already back in Piazza Montecitorio, just a metre from Palazzo Chigi, to present the CGIL’s tax reform: the reversal of the tax drag and a solidarity levy on the richest 1 per cent, totalling 26 billion, ‘more than the government’s budget’. He then attacked the Budget Bill, calling it “absurd” and full of “electoral handouts”. Finally, he announced the general strike against the government on Friday 20 November: “Even more certain now”. For someone about to retire from politics, that was quite a rally. Shortly afterwards, in the early afternoon, at Palazzo Chigi, the government met with the social partners to discuss the budget. But Landini did not attend: he had “another commitment” – a meeting with international trade union delegations. The government’s approach, he explained, “is laughable”: summoning everyone to discuss a budget that had already been presented. Representing the CGIL was a delegation from the secretariat, with the very same proposals they had just outlined in the square. The meeting was just a stone’s throw away, but the secretary had already made his point.
The situation is as follows. Yesterday in agreement with the government, today against it. Yesterday a pensioner-in-waiting, today on the front line. A direct confrontation, for now, is off the cards. The pensioner can wait. The agenda, clearly, cannot.