Europe. Strike and marches in Italy against the policies of the Government of Giorgia Meloni

The grassroots unionism (USB, for its acronym in Italian) has convened for this Friday and Saturday two days of struggle and mobilization against the high cost of living, the war and the policies of the new right-wing government headed by Giorgia Meloni.

The days started this Friday with a general strike throughout the day, convened jointly by the base trade unionism, in an effort to unify the struggles and overcome the separate calls that have been given on several occasions in recent years. Several were made concentrations in front of logistics and distribution warehouseswhere the union is especially concentrated YES Cobasas well as local acts and events in different cities.

On the other hand, There will be a national demonstration on Saturday. with the motto “Against the war and the high cost of living: arms down, wages up!”.

It is a strike and a demonstration that have the objective of converging with the needs and aspirations of the working class in the face of the crisis and the development of its effects on the most exposed sectors of the population.

These actions take place just a week away from the resounding transfeminist demonstration last Saturday and at the same time as The government’s repressive policy accelerates of Meloni for fear that the social context will get too hot. But they are also part of a series of actions that have been taking place at the local or sectoral level, as shown by the confluence of youth, workers and sectors of the left in the demonstrations on October 22 in bologna and that of November 5 in Naplesor as in the mobilization in The Sapienza of Rome.

All this has shown the potential for social mobilization, even radical, which for now has remained in rather reduced actions and located among the sectors that have shown themselves most willing to go out to fight. But the government is well aware that the energy crisis and the effects of the high cost of living combined with cuts to the welfare state, which will continue under Meloni, including the Citizenship Income, can lead to an explosive situation towards next year.

industrialists and governmentHowever still they can count on the conciliatory and passive attitude of the big bureaucratic unions like the CGIL-CISL-UILwho reserve the right to mobilize very little or when it is too late.

In this context, where the social peace of these unions and passivity among broad sectors of workers and workers still prevail, the two days of struggle called by the base unions, although they may be small, intervene in the Italian political reality to point out the elements of crisis, inflation and high energy prices, but also warmongering maneuvers and rearmament policies of the different governments in the context of the war in Ukraine, or anti-immigrant racism, among others.

Faced with this call and the need for convergence of the struggles, Giacomo Turci, from the Frazione Internazionalista Rivoluzionaria (FIR) and editor of the voice of lotte points out that “it is necessary to go out on Saturday in Rome and participate in the strike this Friday, as it was necessary to go out with the thousands of women last Saturday, with the university youth, with the workers of the metallurgical company recovered GKN or the movements against government policies on climate change.The fight is one: today it is articulated in the issues of opposition to racial and gender discrimination, high prices and impoverishment, the war in Ukraine and rearmament imperialist”. Turci says that like dozens of worker, youth and women’s organizations, from the FIR they will participate in the mobilizations with their own program that “includes the need for an indexed income for the unemployed, and complementary measures such as scholarships for university students; a minimum wage of 1,500 euros net and the stabilization of contracts; sliding scale that sets salaries according to the price of the basic basket; reduction of the working day to 30 hours a week with equal salary, to distribute the available work hours between employed and unemployed Stop Italian military intervention and foreign arms trade and shipments Immediately pull Italian and NATO troops out of Eastern Europe Stop imperialist rearmament by cutting military spending!”