WORKERS’ PARTICIPATION AND REPRESENTATION IN ITALY
Salvo Leonardi
1. Information and consultation rights in the Italian system of industrial relations
In the Italian system of industrial relations, the issue of the workers’ participation goes back a
long time and has been the subject of many debates and normative proposals.
Notwithstanding the fact that it is expressly enshrined in the Italian 1948 Constitution (art.
46), concrete steps towards the implementation of workers’ participation has been, over the
decades, few and rather disappointing. Probably the most meaningful experience, quite short
(1945-50), remains that of joint management committees, during the workers’ occupation of
the factories after the WWII and the unsuccessful proposal of a specific law, presented by two
socialist ministers in those years, before the expulsion of the leftist parties from the
government, in 1947. Since then the Italian case can be seen as theoretically rich, but
operatively modest. We can list several trade unions proposals of workers’ participation and
control, different sometimes for their different ideological background but having in common
the basic refusal of any form of unions involvement in forms and levels of corporate coresponsibility, which could have confused the reciprocate and separated roles of labour and
management, or a significant reduction of the union autonomy and power into the industrial
conflict. Things have changed in the last years and, for example, the Italian trade unions
confederations are all in favour of the Directive 2001/86, related to the European Company.
In a such ideological and juridical frame the most remarkable outcomes, in the participatory
matter, was - in the mid 80s – the highly formalised system of information and consultation
rights experienced by the public-supported holdings. Some laws – such as those passed as the
late transposition of the mid-70s EU Directives on collective redundancies, on transfers of
undertakings and on workplace safety and health –foresee that workers to be informed and
consulted on a relatively wide array of themes.
The fulcrum of the system has long remained the collective bargaining, no ruled by the law,
as no ruled by the law has remained the constitutional right to strike. From the second-half of
the 70s onward, collective bargaining – both at national and company levels – set down the
right for workers to be informed and consulted with regards to the company’s production
trends, technological innovation and professional training, equal opportunities, company
services.
The tripartite Social Pact of July 1993 – which establishes the basic regulations governing
industrial relations in Italy – endorsed the value of workers’ participation, elevating it as a
key element in company bargaining procedures, especially in the areas of production-related
wage incentives and of work organisation. At the company level most remarkable experience
of agreements concerning workers’ participation, at company level, are those of Electrolux,
Whirlpool and some others, like Gucci, some banks or in some medium-side companies of
Emilia or Tuscany.
2. Collective representation and participation in the workplace
In some countries, the information and consultation rights, in the workplace, are exercised by
non-trade union organisations that are elected by all workers. In Italy is different; there’s a
single channel, the roots of which can be found in the movement of the Factory Work’s
Councils, born in the climate of 1968-69. Its rationale was and is that the substantial unity of
PHD - IRES Italy; s.leonardi@ires.it
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the workers conditions cannot be split up and doubled neither in terms of functions (collective
bargaining vs. participation) nor for what concerns the source of legitimation or the
constituency (members and no members). The Italian work council is a sort of “amphibious”
body; peak representation of the whole workforce in a company, and company cell for the
trade unions. In these manner, it is not a no-union council but not even a trade union body, as
in Sweden or Britain. Italian trade unions, and the largest in particular – the CGIL – have
always suspected of the possible risks of corporative “egoism” at company or professional
level. This approach is quite crucial in order to catch the real nature of the Italian unionism,
traditionally based on the primacy of the peak confederation on all the sectoral and company
instances, as fulcrum of a broad and ecompassing political solidarity and organisational
coordination and impulse.
Since the social pact of 1993, the work councils will be the “Rappresentanze Sindacali
Unitarie” - RSU (Unitary Works Councils). RSU can be elected in every production unit
with more than 15 workers by all workers (5 in agriculture), no matter whether affiliated or
not affiliated to trade unions. It combines membership representation and electoral
representation of all workers. Two thirds of the components of the RSU are elected by
universal suffrage with several competing lists, and one third from the lists of the unions who
have signed the national sector contract applied in the production unit. This unusual way of
distributing the places on the RSU is aimed at achieving a certain co-ordination and link
between the two contractual levels described above. That’s also why the RSU have exclusive
power on information and consultation rights but shares enterprise negotiation procedures
with the regional unions who have signed the national contract applied in the enterprise.
The percentage of employees covered by workplace representation, esteemed around 66 %
of employees (public sector included), is far above EU 25 average (50%, according to the
Dublin’s Foundation). The lists of Cgil, Cisl and Uil are definitively the most voted and
supported, with more than 80% of the consensus at the RSU elections.
As regards the worker safety representatives (Rappresentante Lavoratori per la Sicurezza RLS), foreseen by the law which absorbs the EU directives on this matter, other thresholds are
applied. The RLS is defined by the law as the subject which participates in the safety
management process in the workplace through consultation with the employer.
Alongside the RSU and RLS, trade union relations at a company level have also been kept,
since quite a while, by organisms that are increasingly becoming important: the jointcommissions (50-50). These commissions are not set up to replace collective bargaining but
rather to prepare the groundwork for it, providing technical support. Their members are
nominated among the elected RSU.
The law in Italy which regulates union representation in the workplace is the “Workers
Charter” (Statuto dei lavoratori) of 1970. The law, among the other, obliges the employers to
allow the election and to recognise the work councils if they have the necessary requisites.
The employer who impedes or hinders the exercise of union rights in the company is liable to
persecution for antiunion activity according to the Statuto (art. 28).
3. What kind information/consultation and what for?
Beyond all possible formal classifications – information, consultation, co-determination – the
ability to influence each other will depend on a number of factors, as the issues, the class of
decision, the level, the degree of formalisation. All studies on the new work paradigms
converge on recognising that, in the post-tayloristic factory workers’ participation has
increased significantly on “micro” aspects. On the contrary, when strategic decisions are
involved – productive strategies, delocalisation, technical or organisational changes – workers
are merely informed.
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The situation is further aggravated by the increasingly multi-national structure of the
modern corporate aggregation, often making it impossible to identify the centres of power
where the decisions affecting national/local units are taken. Through the functional
differentiation of its internal organisation and the complex web of centring and decentring
processes, entrepreneurial power tends to disappear, to escape, from the traditional venues of
collective bargaining and negotiation; to escape, that is, by either: a) scaling down, in the
decentring of its productive and decision-making centres and in seeking a relationship with
workers on an individual basis, or b) scaling up, in creating a legal personality screen, in
transforming itself into a transnational entity.
Trade unions feel that they can no longer defer the reform of their organisational structures
and functions to meet the new global challenges. The most significant outcome of the twodecade long debate have been the EU Directives on EWC and, more recently, on the
European company and on information and consultation rights in EU member States. Unlike
the first two, the directive 2002/14, about information and consultation, has not been
transposed and the inter-confederate negotiation goes head between stop and go.
4. When must trade unions be informed and consulted
A key factor in resolving issues is that of timeliness. Information and consultation must be
issued prior to the executive stage of the project, and it must be clear and comprehensible
even for non-experts. The question is: which are the indicators workers and their trade union
representatives must record to understand that a business project involving them directly is
about to be implemented? When to defend themselves against charges of anti-trade union
conduct or of not having provided information or called trade union for consultations,
companies say that they “live by the day”, in the sense that they themselves are unable to
make plans, they partly say the truth. But if a company gives up making plans or, better still,
if the management of a plant is itself also affected by unexpected decisions at other company
levels – changes dictated by the market or taken from the parent company abroad – how do
we expect trade unions to be in a position to co-determine these decisions?
5. Formalisation and effectiveness
What remains to be clarified at this point is the degree of formalisation with which workers’
participation is made certain, regular, pre-emptive and mandatory. Let’s start with saying that
in Italy, the degree of “abstention of law” or “voluntarism”, in the field of the industrial
relations, was and remains one of the highest of the most industrialised countries.
In concrete, the RSU’s elections are hold where the workers power is strong enough to get
them. In order to avoid cases like these, and also to give more certainness to the whole
workforce and to their rights, Cgil claims for a law which rules all this matter, establishing
clear and transparent criteria in order to measure the representativeness of the signatory
unions and, consequently, the democratic consensus about the collective agreements
outcomes. This is what successfully happen in the public sector, where all the civil servants
enjoy of a law like this since 1997. The Cisl, instead, is against this solution, confirming its
traditional prejudice for any legal interference of the public authority in the self-ruled area of
the industrial relations.
A second consideration regards to the degree of formalisation. Though the thesis sustained
by influential jurists according to which if entrepreneurs allow their decision-making powers
to be regimented in legally binding procedures, workers and their unions must allow the same
with regard to their power to strike, may seem convincing on the legal-formal plane it is not
so in the legal-substantial one. In fact, over the past years, the Italian experience (though, not
exclusively) has shown that employers’ obligation to disclose information can all too easily
be eluded to be “balanced” by a limitation of the right to strike. Entrepreneurs do not want,
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and often cannot, provide information that is adequate, effective, timely. The same, though, is
not applicable for trade union organisation that accept to not break the industrial peace clause.
For this reason, the acquisition of formal rights in the area of workers’ participation cannot
be, in my opinion, exchanged – politically – by a reduction of the workers/unions right to take
industrial action.
6. Conclusions
A significant volume of empirical studies on workers’ participation in enterprise management
proves that over the past two decades experimentation in this area has been mostly initiated
by employers. This inverts an historical trend that had seen workers demand greater industrial
democracy and enterprises take defensive action by making recourse to their prerogatives.
Significant pieces of the traditional trade union platform are today being taken up and
integrated by new corporate strategies. If the idea of industrial democracy had initially been
conceived with the aim of extending industrial citizenship and democracy in economics, in
the current phase these aspects appear as an ex post justification. The aim is to mobilise
human potential through the direct participation of the workers (as single or team work).
From the managerial point of view, the notion of participation coincides with that of
involvement, a semantic and political shift, where a monistic organisational structure is
envisaged, and where the exclusive regulatory agent for labour relations is the enterprise
itself. The underlying ideology of this approach consists in considering technical and
organisational innovation in neutral terms, super partes.
To conclude, I do believe that if, in the light of the new socio-technical paradigms, labour
becomes for employers a key resource, and no longer a bond, a shackle, then it will be up to
trade unions to utilise this change to impose new contractual conditions and terms to the
management. You want me to produce more and better? Fine: but you have to listen to my
proposals regarding quality and organisation of work and, beside, a constant effort about
vocational training, so to improve and to update the workers skills. If you are not interested,
then be ready to bear higher economic and political costs as a consequence of your decisions,
because we will pit your unilateralism against the unilateralism of our resistance and conflict.
Organisational and technical innovations in the area of labour – of total quality and of human
relations in the post-Fordist era – may thus become a new possible opportunity for the
advancement of the demands of workers and their trade unions.
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