Epifani, Angeletti: “We are different but friends, skiing together but never convinced on hunting”

“On the reform of the contractual system or even on the heated dispute for the restructuring of the then Fiat site in Pomigliano, we will also have broken up as trade unionists and we have also been on opposite sides on other occasions but Guglielmo was a really good person, and he is not a way of saying. Never an incorrectness that was a person of great sensitivity, even in a competitive situation, capable of understanding the conditions of the people he represented in a way that was not only political but even sentimental “. At times his voice cracks but Luigi Angeletti, former Uil leader, ‘traveling’ companion of Guglielmo Epifani, then general secretary of the CGIL between 2002 and 2010, remembers with Adnkronos that way of doing, that “special” ability of understand politics. “Guglielmo had this strong ability to analyze the political situation that frankly was not common, a great ability to understand where the political system of our country would end up”, remembers Angeletti again speaking of this special friendship. “We are so different but friends, I knew him since before our debut in different unions, I was general secretary of Uil metalworkers and he secretary of CGIL polygraphs. We also went on vacation together, to ski in the Dolomites, he was a great ski lover “, remembers Angeletti who never managed to convert him to hunting. “Nooo, zero fighter, I never even tried to convince him, I think he was hostile to hunting, he was a thousand miles away from that world.” Yet the hot fronts that saw them on opposite positions were many, during those years. “He had inherited a difficult situation from the point of view of unitary relations created also by his predecessor, Cofferati”, explains Angeletti, recalling the “unitary” will of Epifani who managed “to alternate moments of rupture with long phases of appreciable good relations. “including the moment of greatest conflict, that on the reform of the contractual model in which” he tried to reconstruct a unitary framework but underestimated the need for Confindustria to absolutely want to achieve a stabilization of industrial relations and therefore an agreement on a new contractual model “. Thus Cisl and Uilm signed the separate agreement with Emma Marcegaglia’s Confindustria. “However he was a friend and therefore beyond the political and trade union aspects there was a real emotional bond”, he concludes.