Work, Landini: “By now it is despised, democratic stability is at risk”

“I made a lot of pickets, even very hard ones, in my union life. I blocked the trucks in the yards to prevent the delivery of goods during disputes, I clashed with the bosses and the owners, I shouted to convince the workers to strike. But never, never have I seen a truck driver force a picket, overwhelm workers to kill one. I have never witnessed something like this. ” This was underlined by Maurizio Landini, General Secretary of the CGIL, in an interview with ‘La Repubblica’, commenting on the killing of a young trade unionist in Novara. ” Logistics concerns all of us – explains Landini -. That logic permeates all the manufacturing service activities. a barbarization of human relations. Thus the stability of democracy is also jeopardized. Ours is a democratic republic – it is written in the Constitution – founded on work. But now the exploitation of labor dominates gold, job insecurity, job insecurity. We have gone from job protection to contempt for work. Let’s try to put in line three recent news stories: the tampered warper on which poor Luana worked, the braking systems of the Mottarone cable car also tampered with, and finally the death of Adil. They are linked by the same logic: the time of life and work is bent to the market and profit and not to the centrality of the person. This absence of social bonds also jeopardizes the democratic stability of a country. ” ” A metamorphosis of the relationship between capital and labor has been underway for more than twenty years – adds Landini -. Until now, the logic of the market and profit has prevailed and so work has been progressively devalued: low wages, cuts in investments in research and innovation, poor training, stagnant productivity. And it didn’t happen by chance. A sequence of laws has brought us to where we are: the intermediation of labor, once prohibited, has been re-legitimized; the infinite chain of contracts has been legalized with the logic of maximum discount, to guarantee the earnings of companies but not the rights and dignity of those who work. The jungle in which we find ourselves arises from a series of wrong laws ”. ” On June 26 we also go to the streets to ask for an extension of the blockade. There will be three demonstrations: we ask for the extension of the blockade, the extension of social safety nets and to encourage alternative routes to layoffs, from solidarity contracts to expansion contracts. The government will convene us and restart the social dialogue so we will build a better Italy ”. ” In the seventies, with the Workers’ Statute, Parliament understood the centrality of work – continues Landini -. Today we must recover that spirit: a new Statute with the recognition of the same rights to people who have to work to live. The CGIL has presented a popular initiative law proposal in Parliament, we are ready to confront everyone. But we also need a law that measures the effective representation of trade unions and employers, to extend the effectiveness of national contracts to everyone ”.