Italian Workers’ ‘Great Battle’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32017, 18 June 1969, Page 17

Italian Workers’ ‘Great Battle’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LIVORNO (Italy), June 17.

The head of Italy’s largest trade union federation, the Left-wing General Federation of Italian Workers (C.G.IJL.), declared today that unions in the country were beginning “a great battle for freedom, dignity and security at work.”

The Communist member of Parliament, Mr Agostino Novella, opening the C.G.I.L.’s seventh congress, said Italy needed only one trade union federation; and he called for a conference with the leaders of two other unions, until recently bitter enemies, to discuss a merger.

civil service and agriculture. The C.G.I.L. has the open blessing of the Italian Communist Party, and has been the main instigator of the wave of strikes—including four one-day national stoppages—that has troubled Italy since November.

The two other unions concerned are the independent Italian Labour Union (U.1.L.) and' the Roman Catholic Italian Confederation of Labour Syndicates (C.1.5.L.). Mr Novella said that four basic rights were demanded by the unions: all-round wage rises: a 40-hour, five-day working week; full recognition of the right to strike and autonomy for the unions; and better means of aiding sick workers. The real test of recent cooperation between the unions, he said, would come in the autumn, when the work contracts and wages of five million workers came up for renewal. Mr Novella, who told the 1575 delegates and 500 observers at the congress that Italy’s pharmaceutical industry should be nationalised, called for an immediate cutback in unemployment in the south, and for reforms in the