Infiltration of terrorists in the trade union movement has been highlighted once again through the arrest of 15 terrorists from the Red Brigades on 13 February 2007. Seven of those arrested were listed members of the General Confederation of Italian Workers (Cgil), but were immediately suspended from their positions. Cgil, together with the other leading trade union confederations – the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions and the Union of Italian Workers – instigated a debate on the issue, taking part in meetings and demonstrations in the cities where the arrests took place.
Of the 15 terrorists arrested on 13 February 2007, seven were members of the General Confederation of Italian Workers (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Cgil). Those arrested were active members of the Red Brigade (Brigate Rosse, BR), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group which made a dramatic impact on Italian society in the 1970s and 1980s.
The group in question were members of various federations associated with Cgil: four were members of the Italian Federation of White-Collar and Blue-Collar Metalworkers (Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici, Fiom-Cgil), one belonged to the Italian Chemicals, Energy and Manufacturing Federation (Federazione Italiana Lavoratori Chimici Energia Manifatture, Filcem-Cgil), one was from the Italian Federation of Transport Workers (Federazione italiana lavoratori trasporti, Filt-Cgil) and one, a Post Office employee, belonged to the Communication Workers’ Union (Sindacato Lavoratori Comunicazione, Slc-Cgil). Two of the Fiom-Cgil members held seats on the local management council in the Padua province in northeastern Italy.
The trade union movement, shocked by the arrests, reacted immediately. Cgil suspended all those under investigation and, along with the other two leading trade union confederations – the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori, Cisl) and the Union of Italian Workers (Unione Italiana del Lavoro, Uil) – instituted a campaign to encourage debate on the issue.
Background
In the 1970s, BR engaged in attacks, kidnappings and killings; the victims included many academics and professionals active in the spheres of employment and politics. After a period of harmony, BR struck again in 1999 and 2002, killing professors Massimo D’Antona (IT9905112N) and Marco Biagi (IT0203108N), both experts on employment law and, as such, regularly consulted by the government and the trade unions.
At the end of the 1990s, police started to investigate the appearance of new clandestine groups which seemed distinct in nature from those of the 1970s and 1980s. The new groups were operating separately, without being linked to the historic BR leaders, who are now in prison or have gone underground. Nevertheless, the new groups no longer appear to be completely separate from the original organisation. Indeed, the original BR leaders have now formally recognised the new organisation for the first time.
The new BR have been operating as a fully-fledged clandestine group in the cities of Milan, Turin and Padua, and it is thought that they may have had contacts with imprisoned members of the large organised crime groups: the ‘Ndrangheta’ from Calabria, the ‘Camorra’ from Naples and ‘Cosa Nostra’ from Sicily.
New Red Brigade
Moreover, the new BR seem to be following the same political and operational regime as that of the original group in the 1980s: rooting themselves in social struggles, recruiting members from working and trade union environments, and accompanying their ‘political work’ with an ‘armed propaganda’ aimed at destroying renewal and reform, which includes killing key promoters of such reform. One example of such activity was the planned attack – to be launched by those arrested – on Professor Pietro Ichino, one of the leading Italian academic experts on working rights.
Therefore, the new BR, like the organisation of the 1980s, has tended to recruit in the workplace, exerting its influence on those who feel disillusioned by a government they see as being ‘bourgeois left’ and on those too young to have lived through the violent events of the 1980s.
Reactions of social partners
Cgil, Cisl and Uil organised a series of worker meetings and demonstrations in the cities where the arrests occurred. On 21 February 2007, a large demonstration took place in Turin involving union delegates, public authority representatives (the mayor of Turin, the president of the province and president of the region) and the judiciary, and the general secretaries of the three trade union confederations.
Many people agreed that union membership for these terrorists was simply a cover-up. After all, the essence of unionism is to develop the political and social reform that these terrorists seek to obstruct. It is therefore the leading obstacle to their activities.
The primary concerns of the General Secretary of Cgil, Guglielmo Epifani, are the ability of the new BR to recruit young workers and the role that older terrorists have taken in this recruitment. He stated: ‘The old group is exemplified by those who were involved in the earlier subversive activities and are now trying to make a comeback after years in silence underground. The new group contains many young people, people who are fairly new to the world of work and have only recently taken up union membership.’ Mr Epifani also emphasised the difficulties facing the union movement in making contact with young people. ‘It is the speed with which they change their working activities that is so alarming,’ he commented. He highlights that young people ‘are on short-term contracts and have no large-scale means for social bonding’, and that ‘union engagement is ever less present in the workplace’.
The General Secretary of Cisl, Raffaele Bonanni, feels that, as long as the union movement is active and united, there is much that it can do both inside and outside the workplace. However, he also believes that the movement needs to make changes in two very sensitive areas: that of terminology, avoiding the description of adversaries as ‘enemies’ and eliminating the refusal to recognise them; and that of participation, ‘the only weapon of those without power to counterbalance the strength of those with power’.
The Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, has declared his concerns about terrorism and asked the Italian trade unions ‘to control possible terrorist infiltrations in their organisations’.
The Mayor of Turin, Sergio Chiamparino, is of the opinion that the trade unions play a fundamental role in the fight against terrorism as ‘a social mediator in case of conflicts’. Mr Chiamparino is convinced that ‘terrorist organisations are attempting to damage this form of mediation between trade unions and institutions by exploiting social ill-feeling’.
Vilma Rinolfi, Cesos