A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #35 - From April 25th to May 1st (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"Sons of the workshop or sons of the earth, the hour of the most just 
war is already approaching. ---- The proletarian war, war without 
borders, we will raise red and black flags to the wind". (Hymn linked to 
the Arditi del popolo. G. Raffaelli and G. Del Freo, 1921). ---- "Come, 
May, the people await you, the free hearts greet you, sweet Easter of 
the workers, come and shine in the glory of the sun" ---- (Hymn of May 
1st. Pietro Gori, 1910) ---- April 25th and May 1st are not only two 
holidays marked on the calendar, but they are two fundamental 
anniversaries that a composite political and social alignment has always 
tried to remove from the collective memory of our class, or, in the best 
of cases, to "embalm" in empty rhetoric. The resistance to fascism, 
which began with the Arditi del popolo even before Mussolini took power, 
with participation in the revolution and the civil war in Spain, which 
passed through the great strikes in the factories of March 1943 and 
those of March 1944, to the partisan struggle in the cities and in the 
mountains where thousands and thousands of men and women fought and paid 
with their lives for a better world, must always be remembered not to 
look nostalgically at the past, but because it is essential to preserve 
and pass on the memory, and not only on this 80th anniversary of April 
25. Because it is important to know where we come from, to know who we 
are and where we are going.
But recalling the Resistance of that time cannot be resolved in an 
institutional celebration, completely separated from current resistance, 
and for this reason we also want to remember that of the Palestinian and 
Kurdish peoples; that against military bases and the spread of 
militarism in society; that against the production and trade of weapons, 
that against all the wars of imperialism. We want to remember the 
resistance of the young people who protest against pollution and job 
insecurity; of the women fighting to defend their rights in a 
male-dominated and patriarchal society; of the workers who fight against 
layoffs, for a decent wage, for safety in the workplace and for a better 
quality of life; of the migrants who flee from wars and poverty in 
search of a better future; that of all the individuals who fight against 
resurgent fascism, against every border (because "our homeland is the 
entire world"), for a nature and a humanity freed from capitalist 
exploitation in all its forms; against racism, repression; against every 
political and state oppression. In every circumstance, long live the 
resistance to capitalism!

: So May Day cannot be relegated to an empty anniversary, a generic 
"labor day," but it is necessary to remember its authentically 
working-class and internationalist origins, to recover and re-propose 
those contents of unity, hope and emancipation that have characterized 
the history of the world proletariat. We cannot forget that the origins 
and history of May Day are linked to the struggle for the conquest of 
the eight-hour work day, a struggle that began in 1866 in the most 
industrialized countries of Europe and in the United States of America. 
And twenty years later, in 1886, right in Chicago, during the days of 
struggle that began on May Day for the reduction of the working day, the 
police shot at workers in front of a factory, causing deaths and 
injuries. Subsequently, a provocation was carried out, during a protest 
against the massacre, with serious incidents caused by the police and 
the explosion of a bomb; these facts which, thanks to the statements of 
false witnesses, led to the death sentence of five union leaders and the 
sentencing of three others to many years in prison. These unionists, all 
anarchists, all immigrant workers (except Albert Parsons who was born in 
the USA), completely innocent of the pre-constituted charges brought 
against them, were hanged on November 11, 1887 despite the vast protests 
in the country: thus were assassinated August Spies, Adolph Fischer, 
George Engel, Albert Parsons, while Louis Lingg committed suicide in 
prison before the execution; Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael 
Schwab had their sentences commuted to many years of imprisonment (1).
But the struggles for the reduction of working hours, after an initial 
wavering following the events in Chicago and the consequent repression, 
resumed with greater force, and in a historic congress held in Paris in 
1889 an international day of protest was decided for May 1st of the 
following year in memory of the "Chicago Martyrs" and to demand the 
eight-hour day of work.
Subsequently, thanks to the increasingly large mobilizations of the 
working class, in the early 1900s there were significant reductions in 
working hours in several countries, while the conquest of the eight-hour 
day became widespread in European industry between 1917 and 1919 also 
due to the push given to the proletariat by the Russian revolution. In 
Italy, the first female workers who managed to conquer the eight-hour 
day were the rice weeders of Vercelli in 1906, while in February 1919 
the Fiom formalized with the Confederation of Industrialists the 
agreement for the reduction of working hours to eight hours a day and 48 
hours a week. Subsequently, the royal decree of March 1923 extended the 
working hours of Fiom metalworkers to all categories, while in the 
post-war period the reduction of working hours was left to collective 
bargaining which saw the affirmation of the 44-hour week in the contract 
renewals of 1962/63 and the 40-hour week in the cycle of struggles of 
1969/73 (this timetable was then also established with law 196 of 1997). 
But the employers, after the workers' struggles and conquests of the 
post-war period, at the end of the 1970s began an offensive against paid 
work with the aim of increasing profits, increasingly reducing 
employment and effectively increasing working hours up to 47/48 hours a 
week with the use of overtime; all this favored by the loss of 
purchasing power of wages due to employment blackmail, by production 
restructuring and by the consequent decline of struggles. And today, 
with the blackmail of the delocalization of production, with the attack 
on the Workers' Statute and national contracts, working hours are 
increasing with new forms of exploitation in factories, in services, in 
the countryside; an emblematic example, among many, was that of some 
small companies in Prato where immigrant workers, organized in the Sudd 
Cobas union, had to carry out tough struggles, even suffering squad 
attacks, in order to enforce what was already established in the CCNL 
and in the laws on working hours.
In this situation, the debate in Italy on the reduction of working hours 
has followed a "karst" path, periodically appearing in political debates 
and then disappearing from the scene, only to reappear later; in the 
trade union field it has often been recalled both in contractual 
platforms and in congresses, but without ever being at the center of an 
effective and generalized mobilization. Furthermore, this objective is 
seen by the Cgil, the Cisl, the Uil, albeit with the necessary 
distinctions, in the perspective of flexibility in the modulation of 
hours, in the use of work shifts, even worse in the development of 
part-time, rather than with a "dry" reduction in hours with the same 
pay. But with the increasingly strong introduction of new technologies, 
with the disruptive emergence of what goes under the name of artificial 
intelligence, it is increasingly urgent and necessary to resume the 
battle for a generalized reduction in working hours, with disputes that 
go beyond national borders, for an average salary capable of countering 
social dumping at least within the old continent. It is necessary to 
fight with determination to achieve the objective of a drastic reduction 
in working hours and for strong wage increases.
For this reason, May Day still highlights its great relevance, in order 
to achieve fundamental immediate objectives and continue towards the 
liberation of all exploited and oppressed classes. And so, yesterday as 
today, as tomorrow: Long live the Internationalist First of May!

Note
(1) Six years after the execution of the sentences, the new Governor of 
the State of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, after having examined the 
trial papers, will annul the sentences, pardon the three survivors and 
forcefully brand the infamous sentence that had led to the death of the 
five anarchists.

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