From Bill Shields, retired Chair of the Labor and Community Studies Program at HELU member AFT Local 2121, City College of San Francisco.
The Italian education union, the Federazione Lavoratori della Conoscenza, (FLC) went on a 1-day strike on October 31, with demonstrations, sit-ins and flash mobs in 40 cities. Bargaining on a national basis for almost two hundred thousand members, FLC is asking for fair raises, an end to precarity and right-wing political attacks and “No” to what they call regionalization. Why is “regionalization” worth striking over?
On a visit to the FCL Rome office in September, I found out. Taking time to meet with me were national staff people Raffaele Miglieta, Diana Cesarin and international affairs staff person Miriam Di Paola, who translated. “Regionalization” turns out to mean separating the Italian national education system into two halves, a northern and a southern. The south of Italy is less industrialized and poorer. After surviving the right-wing Berlusconi years, Italy now has a Trump-like prime minister in the person of Giorgia Meloni. Her base includes the right-wing ultra-northern regionalists who want to split off from central and southern Italy, which they see as below them and a waste of government funds. Thus “regionalization” for Italy’s regions is like Trump’s “Give it back to the states,” and would mean allowing something like Jim Crow and segregated education in the Italian south. FLC leaders recognize that these problems have a lot in common and are watching our Nov 5 election with concern.
The Italian unionists had another question, about what will happen in the U.S. in terms of Israel and Gaza. “For us, the war is just over there across the Mediterranean, the threat of it spilling over in our direction is great,” they said.
The Federazione Lavoratori della Conoscenza/ (FCL) is part of the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) the equivalent of the AFL-CIO. The FLC was once separate unions but merged in the early 2000’s to form one large, strong national educators’ union.
More about the situation in Italy:
- Italy: teachers strike for fair pay and job security amid austerity
- Education Sector Strikes in Italy Highlight Contract and Employment Concerns
Send a word of encouragement to our FCL siblings through Miriam Di Paolo.
Edits and additional material from Helena Worthen.