USB 20th, 21st and 22nd May days of struggle: strikes and demonstrations

The pandemic crisis is causing a dizzying increase in class inequality. We must fight to turn the consequences of its criminal policies against capitalism.

Let us relaunch the rights!!

20th May, the day of disobedience on the 50th anniversary of the Workers' Statute

21st May strike of the land workers, thousands of invisible laborers

22nd May national environmental hygiene strike, for RIGHT TO HEALTH and RIGHT TO STRIKE

20th May: demonstrations in many cities

50 years ago, the Workers' Statute became law. From that day on, employers and governments began a long and tenacious offensive to dismantle the rights and protections contained in it in defence of workers.

In recent weeks, the attack and threats from Confindustria and the employers have regained new vigour in defence of their interests to the detriment of the health, rights and wages of millions of workers: from exceptions to health and safety regulations, to the early opening of non-essential activities, from the worsening of working conditions to the repression of struggles and strikes. They now demand a new social pact secure in the complicity of Cgil, Cisl, Uil, starting with a further dismantling of national collective agreements.

With the Italian Re-launch Decree, companies receive a large amount of resources without conditions, while the bosses demand the overcoming of the National collective contract and put a diktat in front of any hypothesis of reduction of working hours. The new Social Pact between Cgil, Cisl and Uil, Confindustria and government at a time when it would be necessary to call into question an economic and social system that has proved incapable of safeguarding not only working conditions but also people's very lives. A social pact that has already counted on submitting to the conditions of the EU and to satisfy all the conditions that companies demand in order to "relaunch the country".

The Workers' Statute for years has been a bulwark against the overwhelming power of the bosses, son of the great workers' struggles of the 1960s. employers.

Against the new social pact

For health and safety

Guaranteed salary and income for all and everyone

Reduction of working hours for the same salary

Nationalisations and universal welfare

21st May strike of land workers

The government has decided to worry about the arms and not the health of the workers. The government decided to worry about vegetables that risk rotting in the fields and not about workers' rights.

With the Relaunch Decree the cries of pain of the invisible, the damned of the security decrees and the Bossi-Fini remain unheard. To protect themselves from Covid-19 they asked for a residence permit for all, convertible for work activity, which would allow them to register with the registry office and have a general practitioner. The government chose instead not to accept desperate appeals from rural areas and metropolitan suburbs.

USB calls the strike of the invisible on 21st May, calling for solidarity with the peasants/farmers crushed by the giants of the large-scale retail trade and consumers who are entitled to ethically healthy food. Because this is the point: in the countryside, it is precisely the rights of farmers, peasants and labourers, whether they are Italian or not, that are lacking.

22nd May national strike of waste collection workers

Waste collection workers , exposed to serious health risks associated with waste processing, often aggravated by the employer's frequent failure to comply with ordinary occupational health and safety regulations, have been working in an extraordinarily dangerous situation in recent months, with the current Coronavirus pandemic, without adequate security measures to protect their own and public health. Workers who have gone on strike to demand adequate  protection systems have been sanctioned by companies, and when they have not been sanctioned, the guarantee committee has intervened to demand sanctions for workers.

In the face of the bans on strikes, we have recorded the unacceptable and serious absence of equally imperative measures and controls requiring companies to apply, without derogations, all the necessary safety standards.

In this situation of serious crisis, workers must fight in defence of the RIGHT TO HEALTH and the RIGHT TO STRIKE. These rights cannot and must not stop at the doorstep of companies.

USB International department