SERRATA. – Suspension of work in factories, workshops, and industries, decided by the owners in order to combat strikes or oppose modifications to the terms of employment. Like the strike, of which it constitutes in a certain sense the counterpart, the s. is essentially linked to the economic and social order commonly called capitalist and found its widest application in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. With regard to it, too, the public authorities have adopted very different positions, ranging from prohibition and condemnation (as, for example, in Articles 414–16 of the Napoleonic Penal Code) to more or less explicit permission.
Article 40 of the new Italian Constitution does not mention this right; it simply states that “the right to strike is exercised within the framework of the laws regulating it.”
All attempts to place strikes and s. on the same footing (the Giannini amendment and the Quinteri amendment) were rejected. Legally, therefore, the right to s. cannot be conceived in the same way as the right to strike: while the latter is constitutionally guaranteed, and a future law prohibiting it would be unconstitutional, the former is not, so that it could be excluded by ordinary legislation without running counter to the Constitution.
More complex is the further question whether the s. is incompatible with the constitutional text. There are two schools of thought on this matter. Some, starting from the fact that strikes and s. constitute an exception to the principle that defence must be entrusted to the public authorities, and that exceptions cannot be presumed, hold that the s. is incompatible with our Constitution; consequently, a law authorizing it would be unconstitutional. “Even if the trade-union law did not expressly prohibit it, the s. would have to be regarded, under ordinary law, as non-performance of the employer’s obligation arising from the employment contract” (F. Santoro-Passarelli, Verso la legge sindacale, in Iustitia, 2 [1949], p. 51). Others, on the other hand, point out that the silence of the Constitution is… silence and nothing else; everything is therefore left to ordinary legislation.
Catholics, too, are not entirely agreed on the moral judgment. Essentially, the various opinions can be gathered into three principal groups. Some hold that the s. may and should be placed on the same footing as the strike and therefore, under the conditions indicated for a strike, may be considered legitimate; the employer, too, may in fact find himself in the worker’s position, that is, without any other means of defending a just cause, while at the same time having a well-founded hope of success and a reasonable proportion between the benefits he hopes to obtain for himself and his own people and the evils he fears he will have to cause others. This is generally the view of moral theologians, especially the older ones—for example, Merkelbach (Summa theol. mor., II, Paris 1947, no. 553, p. 583). Others, however, hold that in this regard there is a substantial difference between employers and workers. While the latter may find themselves in situations so grave that they may, or even must, resort to a strike as a means of struggle, the former can never say the same; the worker strikes for reasons much more closely connected with the fundamental necessities of life than those for which the employer shuts down. Consequently, strikes and s. cannot be placed on the same footing. While the former may be lawful, the latter is not. This is the view held by certain Christian moralists and thinkers more directly engaged in the social field (for example, some editors of Revue de l'action populaire and Christian trade unionists). A third group, numerically very small, holds that, if the conditions indicated for the morality of a strike are present, the s. too may be lawful and obligatory; it nevertheless maintains that such conditions occur much less readily in the case of the s. than in that of the strike. Thus, for example, L. Ruland, Ausserung, in Staatslexikon, I, pp. 494–96.
This last position seems the wisest. In any case, everyone agrees that, where conditions are equal, the s. is as lawful as the strike; they do not all agree, however, that such equality does or does not occur. The classical moralists seem to assume without further qualification that this equality can occur with great ease and considerable frequency; the trade unionists assume without further qualification that it never occurs; others, perhaps more prudently, concede to the trade unionists, against the classical moralists, that there is a profound difference between the position of the worker and that of the employer, but deny that the difference is such as to preclude every possibility that, at least in some cases, the employer may find himself in the situation in which the worker finds himself.
A. De Marco, I rapporti econom. nella Costit. ital., in Civ. Catt., 1947, IV, pp. 203–213; L. Riva Sanseverino, Il lavoro nella nuova Costit. it., in Dir. del lavoro, 1–2 (1948). Giov. Battista Guzzetti