ROME (ITALPRESS) – “I love you and will always carry you in my heart.” This is how CISL Secretary General Luigi Sbarra bids farewell before the national assembly of cadres and delegates. Tomorrow, in fact, the CISL confederal general council will meet, called to ratify Sbarra’s resignation due to age limit, as per the confederation’s statute, and to elect the new general secretary and the new national secretariat. All structures have in recent days expressed full and unanimous support for the proposal to nominate Daniela Fumarola, current deputy secretary general, to succeed him at the helm of Cisl. Many guests were present in the audience, among all, the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni; and the Minister of Labor, Marina Calderone. The premier herself, in her speech, recalled Sbarra’s commitment that “helped workers a lot because the government always listened to him with great respect, trying, when it could, to accommodate common-sense requests. What is the role of a trade unionist if not this? To earn the respect necessary so that the interlocutor can be attentive to those instances. Even when we disagreed,” he added, “we knew we had someone who cared about the good of the workers and not the union they represented or even a political party. I accepted the invitation to reiterate the importance the government attaches to discussions with productive sectors, territories, workers and businesses. No one alone can have the answers to all questions, and knowing how to listen makes all the difference, especially when the interlocutor does not have condescension and prejudice but looks at the merits with honesty. The word confrontation already says this. We have compared our respective theses and proposals, sometimes different and sometimes similar, but with each confrontation we have taken a step forward for workers’ rights, for our productive fabric for the growth of the Nation. What we have done in these two years. I say thank you to the ICFTU for knowing how to interpret confrontation in the noblest sense of the term. We can rebuild that widespread vitality and social elevator that then, also with the help of the CISL, generated in the best years of the postwar period new businesses built by employees, the middle class became owners and increased wealth, employment and birth rate,” the premier noted. “In short, dear friends of CISL, we are united by optimism of will and a sense of life that always leads us to look toward the other and beyond. I know that with respect for roles we will still work very well, and that is why I want to say thank you for accompanying the difficult work of this government with your legitimate claims, with your authority, with your seriousness and always, only and above all looking at the rights and needs of Italian workers,” he concluded. At the center of the morning was the issue of the Participation Act. “It has been a very challenging and complex four years. We bring home important results, the Cisl is respected and is confirmed as a solid and valid reference for the representation of the world of labor. Cisl is growing especially among active workers, there is an important membership component among young people and women. In addition, we are at the last mile regarding the approval of the popular initiative law on participation, a great historical goal, we can reverse the contents of Article 46 that our constituent fathers wanted to ensure the right of workers to collaborate in the choices and management of their companies,” Sbarra said. “We can only make a strong appeal to all political and parliamentary forces to unite in a bipartisan atmosphere to pass a law that is a great approach, a challenge to face in modernity the changes in production and the world of work. Meloni’s words comfort us and confirm the strong governmental commitment to support and pass the law quickly. For the first time in republican history,” he continued, “we can implement the dictate of a constitutional article through a popular initiative law. The ensuing journey has been exciting. Magnificent, even moving, the involvement of our activists. Exciting, for months and months, the initiatives in workplaces and squares. Extraordinary the consensus gathered. The signatures of nearly 400,000 citizens, the adherence of so many of intellectuals and professors from different backgrounds. All around a norm of civility that I will never tire of repeating has nothing preceptive, does not involve the slightest use of dirigiste levers, contains no corporate imposition. None of this. But it is instead a convinced reliance on industrial relations,” he pointed out. “With the full enhancement of free and autonomous contractual encounter. Pure exaltation of industrial relations-this is our bill. So I really don’t know, you tell me, whether the claim that our proposal harms bargaining is more paradoxical or more ridiculous. Honestly, I wondered how such a grotesque invention could be sustained. I tried to give myself a few explanations. The first: one has not even read the text. But I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to think that there are those who argue without documenting themselves at least a little. Second hypothesis: one is prejudicially opposed to the idea of workers’ co-responsibility in corporate choices. It fits. Everyone is free to have his own opinion. Maybe,” he pointed out, “you will also have to struggle to explain to those workers why you do not want a law that increases their powers, that makes them protagonists in the life of their company. But again, it fits. And if I said that I am surprised, looking at several passages in recent years, I would frankly be telling a lie. That from a union culture marked by a mix of antagonism, populism and ‘benaltrism’ that we just can’t seem to get rid of would come an ideological ‘no,’ was alas predictable. What is absurd, and frankly completely out of place,” Sbarra said, “is that to lash out against the application of a constitutional principle is someone who every other day raises alarms about threats to democracy. What is absurd is that he claims to give lectures on the value of bargaining but asks politics, the parties, to legislate and intervene on wages and hours, labor organization and representation. The fact that our proposal also had this ‘collateral effect,’ let’s call it that, in the end is an added merit. The knots have come to the surface. The fouling has emerged. Two very different, not to say opposing, conceptions of union action have come into the open. On the one hand the one paralyzed by demagoguery and incendiary antagonism. On the other the reformist, pragmatic and concrete union action, which in full autonomy accepts and promotes dialogue, to stay within the dynamics of decision-making,” he concluded.(ITALPRESS).-Photo: CISL press office-
