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General strike in Italy against tax cuts
‘for rich’
Compiled by Eamon Martin
Nov. 30 (AGR) — Italy ground to a halt Nov. 30 as millions
of workers walked off the job to observe a general strike in protest
against the economic policies of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s
center-right government. Post office workers, bank clerks, university
teachers, public transport staff, employees of state television and
many thousands of other Italians stopped work for four to eight hours
in what the unions described as an attack on Berlusconi’s budget.
Factories, trains, banks and planes came to a standstill for hours with
rallies reported in more than 80 towns and cities across Italy. Columns
of demonstrators, many braving pouring rain, filed through the centers
of Rome, Turin, Milan, Venice and other main cities.
Unions said 100,000 people marched in Milan. In Venice, where the main
square was flooded, an estimated 40,000 people turned out.
In Rome, they shouted anti-Berlusconi slogans and marched carrying banners
reading, “Where is my contract?” and “The government
is a thief.”
National carrier Alitalia said it had canceled 136 flights, including
70 international routes, but the strike also forced British Airways,
Air France, Iberia and Lufthansa into frantic rescheduling and cancellations
as airport staff went on a four-hour strike from midday.
Post and government offices closed all day while major newspapers were
absent from newsstands after a printers’ strike. In Florence, museums
holding Renaissance masterpieces — the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia,
home of Michelangelo’s David — were shuttered.
Some hospitals could only guarantee emergency room service.
The walkout comes just days after Berlusconi announced $8.6 billion
of tax cuts for 2005.
Unions have denounced the package, saying it benefits the rich and offers
little help to workers who are feeling the pinch after more than three
years of meager economic growth.
“[This] general strike is the best response to the social massacre
of this well-to-do government which gives to the rich while heavily
cutting services to citizens,” said Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, the
head of Italy’s Green party.
Italy’s center-left, as well as the leading association of business
leaders, have labeled the cuts as a trick to curry favor with voters
ahead of 2006 general elections. Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, head of
the Confindustria business lobby, dismissed the tax breaks as “a
short-term electoral tactic.”
Berlusconi pushed his center-right coalition allies hard to get them
to agree to the tax cuts, threatening to dissolve the government if
they did not.
The cash will come from a squeeze on spending, increases in some minor
taxes and an extended amnesty under which people who have done illegal
building work can pay a fine to have it deemed legal — a policy
opposed by environmentalists and the left.
Italy’s three main unions called the strike. Between them, the
CGIL, CISL and UIL represent around 11 million workers — 55 percent
of Italy’s labor force.
“We consider Berlusconi’s budget wrong and inadequate,’’
the three unions said in a joint statement. “The fiscal reform
is useless and wrong and we demand that it be retracted.’’
Berlusconi, Italy’s wealthiest citizen, “takes from the poorest
to give to the richest,’’ said Guglielmo Epifani, general
secretary of CGIL, Italy’s biggest union.
The unions said 80 percent of public service workers in the industrial
city of Turin observed the strike, with 55,000 taking part in a demonstration
in the city center.
The demonstration in Naples was being combined with a protest against
the local Mafia, known as the Camorra, after a turf war in the southern
port city claimed its 118th victim overnight.
The Nov. 30 general strike was the fifth, affecting the vast majority
of Italy’s 23 million workers, in the past two-and-a-half years.
“This demonstration is the start of a unified action to get this
country back on its feet,” said former European Commission President
Romano Prodi, who hopes to lead a broad left-wing alliance against Berlusconi
in the 2006 general elections. “We’re not just protesting
against a policy but are starting work to resuscitate this country.”
Sources: Agence France-Presse, ANSA, Associated
Press, BBC, Bloomberg News, Corriere della Sera, Financial Times (UK),
Reuters
Latin American workers affected by economic
insecurity
By María Cecilia Espinosa
Santiago, Chile, Nov. 23 (IPS) — Economic insecurity affects
the vast majority of the world’s workers, but is especially marked
in Latin America, according to officials from the International Labor
Organization (ILO), a UN specialized agency.
“Systems for the protection of workers have not kept up with the
changes that have taken place in countries and labor markets as a result
of technology, globalization or economic development models,” José
Figueiredo, the senior economist and research coordinator for the ILO
Socio-Economic Security Program, told IPS.
According to a recent ILO report, “Economic Security for a Better
World,” roughly 73 percent — almost three-quarters —
of the world’s workers live in circumstances of economic insecurity,
while only eight percent live in countries that offer a high degree
of security.
The report, prepared by the Geneva-based program headed by Figueiredo
and based on four years of research, reveals that economic security
leads to personal happiness, and is beneficial in terms of growth, development
and social stability.
As part of the research for the report, over 48,000 workers were surveyed
in 15 countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania
and Ukraine.
A second survey, on job flexibility and security, was carried out in
over 10,000 workplaces in 11 of these countries.
The report addressed seven forms of work-related security: income, labor
markets, employment, skills, work, jobs and representation.
The ILO grouped the countries studied into four categories: “pacesetters”
(with good policies, good institutions and good outcomes), “pragmatists”
(good outcomes in spite of less impressive policies or institutions),
“conventionals” (seemingly good policies and institutions
but with less impressive outcomes) and “much-to-be-done countries”
(weak or non-existent policies and institutions and poor outcomes).
The study found that political democracy, respect for civil liberties
and government spending on social security significantly increase economic
security, while economic growth has only a limited effect on security
in the medium and long term.
For Figueiredo, the most striking conclusion of the report is the gap
between the needs of workers and the protections offered to them.
“The world is facing new systemic risks. Someone living in Brazil
will suffer the effects of a financial shock in Asia, because the crisis
will inevitably spread there, and there is no system to protect people
against this,” he said.
Interestingly, the study found that higher levels of skills and training
are actually inversely related to well-being, because a growing number
of people feel that the skills and qualifications they possess do not
correspond to the jobs that they are obliged to perform, leading to
what the report calls “status frustration.”
The researchers also determined that the global distribution of economic
security does not correspond to the global distribution of income.
Whereas countries in South and Southeast Asia have a greater share of
global economic security than their share of the world’s income,
the Latin American countries, by contrast, offer their citizens less
economic security than would be expected from their relative income
levels.
As a consequence of globalization, the world economy has become increasingly
prone to crises and abrupt periods of recession that spread around the
planet, and Latin America is the region most severely affected as a
result. Between 1980 and 1998, more than 40 economic crises hit Latin
America, leading to a drop in gross regional product of over four percent.
The region, represented in the report by Argentina, Brazil and Chile,
was found to fare worse than the global average in terms of a decline
in economic growth rates in per capita terms and an increase in the
variability of annual economic growth rates, implying greater economic
insecurity.
The ILO report stated that Latin America has the most unequal distribution
of wealth in the world, and that in terms of economic security, 42 percent
of the region’s nations fall into the category of “much-to-be-done
countries,” while a third rated as “conventionals” and
another 25 percent as “pragmatists.” None of the region’s
countries could be considered a “pacesetter” in economic security.
In the Latin American nations studied, over two-thirds of workers in
urban areas had jobs with at least some degree of informality, and women
were found to be particularly affected.
The status of the workplaces studied did not necessarily determine that
of their employees. In Chile, 38 percent of workers in informal enterprises
had formal employment conditions, while 42 percent of employees of formal
companies had informal labor relations (as a result of outsourcing,
for example).
According to Figueiredo, the researchers also found a great deal of
statistical evidence that women are suffering more, especially within
workplaces. “We found that in almost all of the countries studied,
women did not have the same opportunities for training or promotion
within the company,” he explained.
The ILO report establishes that economic security should be viewed as
a human right, as well a necessary step towards real freedom.
Figueiredo advocates state protection policies based on rights, such
as the right to a minimum income for all citizens. Moreover, he added,
state policies should have a universal scope, and not be limited to
the poor, “because that would only solve the problem of that particular
sector, and in a crisis, more people are left vulnerable.”
According to the ILO report, people in countries that provide their
citizens with a high level of economic security have a higher level
of happiness on average. The key factor for happiness and satisfaction,
however, is not income level, but rather the extent of income security,
measured in terms of income protection and a low degree of income inequality.
For ILO representative Fabián Bertranou, “many of the insecurities
affecting workers are not only related to income or employment, but
also to other aspects of their working lives, such as professional development,
social protection, or pensions for the future.”
All of these concerns undoubtedly affect levels of productivity, he
added.
Figueiredo concurred. “We have evidence that when workers are provided
with more security, both society and businesses work better. The Scandinavian
countries are among the world’s wealthiest, and they have both
the highest levels of social protection and the highest levels of production,”
he concluded.
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