Two million union protesters descend on Rome

Marchers in Rome carrying flags of Italy’s largest union, Mar. 23, 2002. Photo courtesy of Indymedia Italy

Compiled by Sean Marquis

Mar.23— Up to two million unionists descended on Rome on Saturday, painting the city center red with billowing flags in a massive show of force against plans by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to re-write labor laws.

The demonstration was also broadened into a protest against political violence following the killing last Tuesday of a senior government adviser who drew up changes to Italy’s long-standing employment rules.

More than 9,000 buses and 60 special trains carried members of Italy’s largest union, the CGIL, from all corners of Italy, bringing central Rome to a standstill.

There was a heavy police presence on the watch for any disturbances and helicopters buzzed overhead monitoring the huge crowds. Thousands of anti-corporate globalization protesters mingled with the throng of marchers.

Television broadcasts and union leaders estimated the turnout at “up to two million” people.

Tuesday’s murder of government adviser Marco Biagi by apparent leftist extremists cast a pall over the event, but union leaders said they would not let the killing lessen their resolve.

A group claiming to be an offshoot of the leftisit Red Brigades guerrilla movement – defunct for over 15 years – circulated e-mail statements claiming responsibility for gunning down Biagi outside his Bologna home.

Many on the left are suspicious and feel the killing was done by fascists to spur a government crackdown on leftists – as happened quite often during the 70’s and early 80’s.

Either way, participants at Saturday’s rally denounced the violence as well as the government’s proposed labor policies.

“We are here to fight terrorism, to support democracy and to show the government its intentions are wrong,” CGIL leader Sergio Cofferati told supporters crammed into the Circus Maximus, site of ancient Rome’s chariot races.

The CGIL said Saturday’s turnout was one of the biggest in modern Italian history and exceeded a 1994 rally when more than a million people took to the streets to protest pension reforms put forward by Berlusconi, during his first stint in government.

Shortly after that demonstration, Berlusconi’s government collapsed, and he was not voted back into power until last year.

“Our fundamental rights are at stake, the rights of workers and the poor,” said Pietro, 50, a construction worker who traveled to Rome from Brindisi on the heel of Italy. “I couldn’t not be here.”

“I’m here not so much for myself, but for my 13-month-old daughter,” said Maria Cristina, 30, a secretary. “I want to fight for the rights she should have when she starts to work.”

Unionists say the proposed labor reforms will make it easier for companies to fire people. Berlusconi says it will make the labor market more flexible and create jobs.

While unionists were among the first to condemn Biagi’s killing, the death and its timing has left the labor movement in a delicate position, with some rightist politicians linking union opposition of labor reform to the murder.

Waving banners reading “Terrorism kills our rights” and “Don’t touch Article 18" — a reference to the labor reform the government wants to push through — Saturday’s protesters appeared determined but peaceful.

“We are answering those who accuse us of being with the terrorists. My father was killed by the Red Brigades. I’m here to say that workers and protesters are not at all supporters of terrorists,” said Salvatore Berardi.

Saturday’s march was one of several planned in the days and weeks ahead which pit the power of the unions — representing some 12 million people, 20 percent of the population — against the government.

Murder – ‘Invitation to stay at home’

In a press statement the a Italian union federation COBAS linked the media spin [Prime Minister Berlusconi owns three of the major TV stations in Italy – representing more than half the market there] of possible “leftist terrorism” to the murder of Biagi just days before the scheduled labor rally. COBAS contends that this is part of a rightist/fascist campaign – with possible government support – against labor and leftist movements in Italy.

“This ‘exemplary’ action in its cold-blooded rituality of death is a chilling message to the entire labor movement, to all those who have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the policies of social restoration on the part of the center-right government…It is an explicit invitation to stay at home,” the statement said.

The statement continued, “the murder of Professor Biagi is intended to spread fear among the workers and throughout the country…The COBAS will not allow themselves to be intimidated.”

Luca Casarini of the Tutte Bianche (“White Overalls” – a non-violent, anti-corporate globalization, direct action group) released a statement calling Biagi’s murder “a horrible pro-regime homicide.”

Casarini argued that even if the killing was carried out by a Red Brigade off-shoot, it would do nothing but help the right-wing government.

“Whoever reads the delirious e-mails going around from those claiming responsibility can come to understand a great deal,” Casarini stated. “The culture expressed in those pages is dead and buried, with the society and among the extraordinary new movements struggling for a new democracy.

“That culture which speaks of ‘imperialism’ instead, as we do, of Empire, that culture which wants the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ — what proletariat? Dictatorship? Of what... globalization? — and not real democracy; those skillfully composed phrases from highly informed notions of economics and absurd prehistoric readings of social development are not expressions of a living, real subjectivity.”

Casarini wrote that political murders such as Biagi’s, “are serial homicides, not actions expressing a political will.”

“But…(t)hey are homicides that stabilize. They serve only those who want to stop the large-scale movements, to those who want to drag us into a war against civilians, as we have seen in Genoa, New York and Afghanistan, in order to produce a new despotic, anti-democratic sovereignty in which violation of human rights is standard fare.”

Sources: Indymedia (UK), Reuters

Union stages pay strikes in Germany
Several thousand members of Germany’s largest industrial trade union staged short warning strikes on Mon., Mar. 25. The members of the IG Metall union spread their protests around various engineering plants in eastern Germany, where unemployment is double the national average.

Similar short work stoppages are planned in western Germany.

The union states that its 2.8 million members deserve a generous pay raise because a moderate, two-year wage settlement agreed in early 2000 was subsequently wiped out by unexpectedly high inflation.

IG Metall also seeks the long term goal of eliminating pay distinctions between “workers” and “salaried employees,” who perform tasks of similar importance but earn different incomes depending on formal education levels and whether tasks involve physical labor. (Financial Times)

Colombian oil union attacked
Colombian United Union of Workers (USO) oil refinery section treasurer Rafael Jaimes Torra and his 16 year-old nephew were gunned down in the port city of Barrancabermeja, Santander Province on Wed., Mar. 20. The same night, two gunmen also fired shots at the USO offices in the same city.

Refinery workers immediately went on strike to protest the killings, but their work site was placed under military control as part of a “contingency” plan for dealing with labor unrest.

“This situation seemed to be due to a coordinated and premeditated plan to eliminate the union,” stated USO directors.

Since February, the USO has received threats from the rightwing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which has ties to the Colombian military. On Feb. 25, the AUC abducted the general-secretary of the USO pipeline section.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 30 union activists have been murdered in Colombia.
(Weekly News Update on the Americas)

South Korean police storm strikers’ base
Thousands of South Korean riot police stormed the campus of Seoul’s Yonsei University and detained hundreds as a deadline passed for striking power workers to go back to work or be fired on Mon., Mar. 25.

The operation began just after 3,200 workers gathered for a sit-in protest against government plans to privatize debt-stricken state electricity firms.

Police said 381 workers were detained.

The raid followed serious clashes outside the campus on Mar. 24. when hundreds of students and labor activists hurled firebombs and rocks at police who attacked with truncheons. 3,912 workers are still on strike. The strike has the support of the country’s two umbrella labor groups, one of whom has threatened to stage a general strike in response to the governments use of force against workers.
(Agence France Presse)