SINDACALISMO and SINDACATO. – These are forms of professional organization that are currently usually called, in the various languages: sindacati, syndicats, sindicatos, trade unions, gewerkschaften.
I. GUIDING THREAD FOR A HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION OF TRADE UNIONISM
The organization of the population into professional groups has certain characteristic features that may serve as a guiding thread for a historical investigation: structurally, the fact that the group is composed of persons who engage in the same productive activity, or in related activities, and precisely insofar as they engage in that activity, independently of the replacement of individual members; functionally, the fact that, fundamentally, the group tends toward the economic and social defence and advancement of its members insofar as they belong to a particular category or group of producers.Professional associationism is a phenomenon recurring in the most diverse periods and in countries belonging to the most varied civilizations. This provides experimental confirmation of the natural tendency toward it, as a particular manifestation of the complex social nature of man. It follows that the prohibition of such associationism, proclaimed by the guiding principles of the French Revolution and by the legislation inspired by them, constitutes in history an interlude rather than a tradition; and it also follows that such a prohibition must be regarded, at least generally, as contrary to natural law, excessive, and dangerous. However great the economic, juridical, and political importance of professional associations may be, controls and limitations must be imposed upon them (since their purposes are limited, even if pursued with great intensity) by a superior political authority, guardian of the general interest of the community at a given moment and also in its future development. In particular, the anarchic excesses must be restrained (cf. in Roman law: Lex de collegiis restituendis novique instituendis; Lex Julia, etc.), as must the tendency toward the formation of closed bodies, exclusivist in their privileges without corresponding functions and inimical to social progress (cf. the legislation suppressing the degenerate medieval “arts”).
II. EMERGENCE AND MATURATION OF CONTEMPORARY SYNDICALISM
Limiting ourselves to a very rapid outline of events closer to our own time, it is well known how the craft guilds, after a period of splendour, began to decline. Their decline, already considerable in the 14th century, continued thereafter without interruption. The economic environment underwent radical transformations, both through the expansion and relocation of the principal economic, productive, and commercial centres, owing especially to the discovery of the countries of America and the formation of great colonial empires; through an intensified concentration of capital; through the emergence and rapid, vigorous development of mechanisation and, generally, the adoption of new technical means of production, following marvellous inventions and discoveries; and through the intense gathering of ever larger masses of workers around new industries, under conditions of pure wage labour, together with an increasing specialisation and division of labour. And while ever greater freedom in public life was being demanded, the guilds instead hardened into closed, privileged bodies, without corresponding functions of public utility. Their narrow and backward regulation of productive activity was a serious hindrance to progress. Hence there first arose sporadic measures of reform, and then measures of suppression, culminating in France in the Turgot Edict (1776) and, after the various vicissitudes of that Edict, in the celebrated revolutionary decrees of 4 August 1789. On 15 June 1791, the Constituent Assembly went to the extreme of prohibiting any professional association as contrary to the fundamental principles of the Revolution (cf. the law named after the constituent Le Chapelier).Even in this excess, French legislation served as a model for the other European countries for several decades. Under a regime of virtually unlimited economic freedom, with trade unions prohibited and public authority absent, individual workers in reality found themselves in a scarcely less than servile situation, according to a phrase of Leo XIII in the encyclical Rerum novarum (1891), also because of the undercutting competition of the less costly labour of women and children. Class struggle thus began to ferment in an environment saturated with social inequalities, deepening the divides ever further.
The most effective impetus towards a new form of association and protective labour legislation must perhaps be found, at least as regards the working-class environment, less in political and trade-union doctrines, which were not always clearly formulated and still less well understood, than in a certain vivid sense of justice, strong and naturally welling up from within consciences, directed towards an order that would better balance the relations among the human factors of production. Unfortunately, the prohibitive laws drove workers towards extra-legal acts of self-defence and towards theories of radical subversion; and when those laws were abolished (beginning in England in 1824), the trade-union movement would already be largely channelled along paths diverging from an ordered social collaboration. Meanwhile, amid heated debates, divergent economic-social and political-legal theories were developing. Extreme left-wing theorists saw in the trade union a cell of the new society which, through a heroic class of producers and the myth of the general strike (Sorel), was to replace the State with a federalism of economic organisms. Opponents on the extreme right, on the other hand, feared the eruption of an authoritarian revolutionism oppressive of individual liberty, almost a new form of feudalism. Intermediate were the more realistic theories (though themselves variously shaped), directed towards immediate action for the economic protection of workers and the promotion of reforms (v. LEGISLAZIONE SOCIALE), sometimes combined with co-operative action (guild socialism) and mutual-aid action, which over time were acquiring increasingly distinct autonomous forms.
III. SOCIAL CATHOLICISM AND TRADE UNIONISM
The reconstruction of professional institutions has always been one of the cornerstones of the doctrine and practice of modern social Catholicism. It was in the Papal States that, following the restrictive measures of Pius VII in 1800–1801, the guilds and corporations of those engaged in trades or in any branch of commerce were re-established on new foundations (by Pius IX’s motu proprio of May 1852). Noteworthy is L. Bottini’s report (La questione operaia e la corporazione cristiana) to the Seventh Catholic Congress (Lucca 1887), and even more so the Social Week of Assisi (1911), devoted entirely to the subject.With regard to the official magisterium, the references in important encyclicals and in numerous documents and speeches from Leo XIII to Pius XII are significant. A concise account is found in the so-called Codes of Malines (chs. 3, 4, 7) and of Camaldoli (art. 67 onwards). The most recent formulation is that contained in the final declaration of the Twenty-Fourth Social Week, likewise devoted to professional organization (Genoa 1951). A trade-union organization, it states among other things, directly representing the professional categories; existing in order to pursue their interests in harmony with the requirements of the common good; endowed with its own initiative and responsibility; independent in relation to political parties and autonomous in relation to the State, implies by the mere fact of its existence an organic-pluralistic conception and structure of social life, founded on consideration for the person and recognition of the person’s fundamental rights in the political and social sphere. Those who engage in any professional activity have, by nature itself, the right to associate. The objectives of trade-union organization consist in pursuing the interests proper to the category that it represents. A trade-union organization, when circumstances permit or require it, may engage in activities that contribute to the elevation of the working classes, such as, for example, mutual aid, recreation, assistance, moral education, and religious formation. In defending its own interests or pursuing its own objectives, a trade-union organization must base its action on the principle of collaboration: this is demanded by the very natural sociability of human beings, by the vital interdependence among the various moments and sectors of economic life, and is consistent with scientific and technical progress.
Once collective bargaining has been affirmed as the normal means by which trade unions pursue the interests of their respective categories, and the strike as another means, in regimes of economic freedom, when efforts at settlement have first been exhausted, and within the limits required by the common good, the independence of trade unions from political parties is likewise affirmed, without excluding relations of collaboration with them. The State recognizes trade-union organization insofar as it arises as a free association and therefore, in relation to the State itself and within the sphere of its competence, is by its nature autonomous. In order effectively to safeguard its own interests and better contribute to the achievement of the common good, trade-union organization, in accordance with the concrete conditions of time and place, should be continuously present within the structure of the State and in an organic form.
In keeping with their own vision of life, it would be desirable for Catholics to establish trade-union organizations inspired by Christianity. Historical circumstances may permit or require Catholics to join non-confessional trade-union organizations, provided that the fundamental principles of social coexistence are respected. In this case Catholics must create workers’ associations entrusted with the task of providing religious and moral formation, so as to inspire and guide their action also in economic and social matters.
IV. TRADE UNIONISM IN ITALY
Throughout the nineteenth century and then at the beginning of the twentieth, education spread, the political franchise was extended, civil liberties were broadened, the confessional and mutual-aid movements developed. In addition, an economy offering higher wages, which made saving possible; the concentration of large urbanized massesand therefore their constant contact; the spread of new doctrines and social institutions—all led to the formation of a class consciousness, understood as the reflected upon, deeply felt, and practically active idea among the lower multitudes that they were called to constitute a homogeneous part, with their own special functions within the social body, and that they possessed the right and the corresponding strength to translate this purpose into concrete, vital, and enduring reality (G. Toniolo).
In Italy the new workers’ organizations arose late, because the new large-scale capitalist economy was established late and extended only with difficulty, for various reasons, chief among them the political struggles for national unity, which absorbed a large part of public and private activity, and the poverty of raw materials. Depressed wages, inadequate education, and the severity of the penal code initially combined to hinder the formation of an orderly occupational movement. But this movement would then spread and consolidate increasingly, unfortunately for the most part in forms divergent from a properly understood national interest; and class selfishness, governmental weakness, and the incomprehension of the educated classes all bore a share of responsibility. Economists were obedient to the doctrine of laissez-faire and laissez-passer, while jurists were too attached to the rigid privatist doctrines of Roman law, which no longer corresponded to the new political and economic environment.
Before 1860, the relatively most numerous groups of societies were found in Emilia, until then partly belonging to the Papal States; they had a certain religious character. Similar societies for mutual aid were also found in Turin. The first association for resistance seems to have been that of the typesetters, whose purpose was to oppose wage reductions (Turin, 1848). In 1856 the Artistic-Glassmaking Association was established at Altare (Genoa), the first production cooperative.
As early as 1842 Mazzini wrote of the “necessity of a special organization for Italian workers,” and in 1861 proposed an organization of workers which would rise from the guild through municipal and regional master guilds to the grand national council, that is, to the representation of the regions in the Artisans’ Association of Italy. In that year the movement began to develop more decisively, in opposition to Mazzinian ideology, which was national in character and based on collaboration, and to the incipient socialist movement, whose principal standard-bearer in Italy was the Russian Bakounin (between 1864 and 1874). Mazzini perceived the danger that was emerging; the government did not. The Address to the Italian Workers is an extremely severe indictment of that International (London, 1864), whose first steps he had followed with a certain, if distrustful, sympathy. While Garibaldi launched the famous phrase, “the International is the sun of the future,” Mazzini reproached internationalist doctrine and action for their negation of God, the fatherland, and private property. In practice, however, the Mazzinian movement was not very significant.
One characteristic of the Italian movement was provided by agricultural workers. Indeed, in Italy, an eminently agricultural country, rural workers began organizing relatively early in comparison with other countries. Some Mantuan organizations date from 1884. The Sicilian Fasci consisted largely of peasants. The first, that of Catania, was inaugurated on 1 May 1889 and had a distinctly socialist character. The movement, rather disorderly, was vigorously opposed and proved ephemeral. But leagues in other regions of Italy did not disappear. In Romagna, republican propaganda joined with socialist propaganda. In 1900 the Postellanza of Sharecropping Peasants was established at Forlì, and in 1901 other organizations arose at Ravenna and Cesena. In the same year the First National Congress of Agricultural Workers was held in Bologna, and the National Federation was established.
Another movement of particular importance was that of the Chambers of Labour. They began to be discussed in Italy in 1888, and in 1890 the statute of the first Chamber, which arose in Milan, was drafted. This created a kind of territorial community of workers. Municipalities provided subsidies, while, on the other hand, the People’s Secretariats arose under the auspices of the Christian-social movement, opposing the monopolistic attempts of organizations of a socialist character. The struggle would thereafter remain ongoing, principally with regard to the right of representation, claimed, even if only as a minority, by the white organizations in bodies of the public administration.
Between 1900 and 1906, a crisis of method and general direction became evident in the Italian workers’ movement. The division of the Socialist Party into two factions, the reformist and the revolutionary, was followed by a division within the workers’ movement as well. The Central Secretariat of Resistance, established in 1902, had ceased to function; then, after the Congress of 1905, it passed into the hands of the opponents of the reformist method. The reformist organizations therefore founded (1 October 1906) the General Confederation of Labour, which subsequently played the most important role in the general movement, as, for example, on the occasion of the occupation of the factories following the extremely serious metalworkers’ conflict of 1920. It consisted of the National Federations of Resistance (industrial or occupational) and the Chambers of Labour, which followed the direction of the class struggle. The affiliated organizations normally possessed functional and financial autonomy, “conducting themselves as free bodies with a democratic constitution” (art. 45 of the confederal Statute), subject to the right of confederal oversight. An agreement linked the Confederation of Labour with the National League of Cooperatives and with the Federation of Mutual Societies (the “red triple alliance”), while a pact of alliance linked the Federation itself with the Socialist Party.
Among the other national organizations that preceded the Fascist regime, and which were later swept away by it, as was also the C.G.L., the following should be recalled: the Italian Trade Union Union, the old syndicalist organization dissenting from the General Confederation of Labour and tending toward anarchism; the Italian Labour Union, established in 1918 after the Trade Union Union expelled the advocates of war against the Germans. The workers’ movement in Italy did in fact include minorities favorable to the war, such as the Syndicalist Chamber of Parma and the Milanese Trade Union Union founded by Filippo Corridoni; the Italian Confederation of Workers, founded in Rome in 1918 to coordinate Christian trade unionism, which had a notable tradition (previously the movement had been centered on the Social Union among Italian Catholics [v.], which dissolved in 1919). The “white triple alliance of labour” consisted of the alliance proclaimed among that organization, the Italian Cooperative Confederation, and the Confederation of Mutual Aid and Social Insurance. In January 1922 the National Confederation of Fascist Trade Union Corporations arose; it was subsequently dissolved, and parallel confederal organizations of employers and workers were established for the major branches of production (agriculture; industry and transport; commerce; credit and insurance; and another confederation for professionals and artists).
Since it is impossible to follow all the organizational systems and their related developments, it may be said in general, at least with regard to Italy, that individual workers join trade associations (of the first degree) for sectors defined in various ways (the so-called trade-union classification); the associations then federate and confederate (in bodies of the second or third degree, whose members are not individual workers, but bodies of the first or second degree). At the summit of this complex system thus stand the great confederations, representing, through the intermediary bodies, workers in all categories. In this way, Italy has the Italian General Confederation of Labour (with a social-Communist tendency) and the new Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions, non-political and non-confessional, also open to Catholic workers, who, for purposes distinct from but coordinated with those more properly trade-union in nature, namely economic defense, and for ethical, cultural, and other purposes, are grouped in the A.C.L.I. (Christian Association of Italian Workers [v.]).
In Italy the movement of company executives is also highly effective, that is, the body of employees of the highest rank, constituting a kind of general staff within the contemporary economic system. The relevant trade associations are united in the Italian Confederation of Company Executives (C.I.D.A.).
Among entrepreneurs, organization does not rise to an integral unity on the model of the confederations mentioned above for workers; they stop at the major branches of production, namely the Confederations of Agriculture, Commerce, and so forth. Of paramount importance is the General Confederation of Italian Industry (founded and revived between the two wars, in 1919 and 1944, by coordinating movements dating back to the last twenty years of the nineteenth century). While it brings together trade confederations, the Trade Association of Credit Institutions (Assicredito) directly unites individual enterprises and companies. A separate position is held by the Confederation of Municipalized Enterprises, formed among the federations of municipalized and equivalent enterprises. A movement parallel to the A.C.L.I. for entrepreneurial executives is that of the U.C.I.D. (Christian Union of Entrepreneurial Executives): V. OPERE ADERENTI ALL'AZIONE CATTOLICA, II. U.C.I.D.
Artisans and categories of liberal professionals also have their own organizations (for the latter, V. ORDINI E COLLEGI PROFESSIONALI).
V. DISCIPLINA GIURIDICA DELLE ASSOCIAZIONI PROFESSIONALI
At first, after the French Revolution, professional association was generally regarded as an unlawful act in law (criminal and, at the very least, civil). Nevertheless, the movement increasingly asserted itself clandestinely or with de facto tolerance, and Trade unions developed in England and Syndacats in France (from the grouping of the compagnons around their secretary or syndic).Once the phase of legal prohibitionism and of the State’s non-intervention in the sphere of the private economic activity had been overcome, legislation increasingly developed, especially after the First World War, concerning the collective or trade-union regulation of economic relations in labor. Not only was professional association regarded as a lawful activity and therefore productive of legal effects, but the system of registering or recognizing trade unions as private-law entities also became common, and, in some countries, as public-law entities as well, participating in state functions (especially in the multifaceted administrative function) and possessing regulatory powers (through specific instruments, such as collective agreements, applicable to all categories of those concerned, members and non-members alike) and powers of representation, albeit on a modest scale, in various and numerous bodies.
An interesting process of evolution thus unfolded, still in the course of development or adjustment, which has moved from the most overt initial hostility between the State and the trade unions in the first half of the last century to their present direct mutual collaboration. In contact with reality, the trade unions have greatly moderated, at least in their methods of struggle, their revolutionary activity—except when they become more or less unconscious instruments of political parties—not to mention those which, by program, have always kept their distance from subversive ideologies; the State, for its part, through realistic contact with social life, has recognized in professional associations entities to be employed in the direct or indirect exercise of its own functions.
The legal order thus taking shape includes multiple relationships: between members and trade unions; between opposing trade unions (of employers and workers); between competing trade unions (within the same economic category, where a plurality of trade-union organizations exists rather than unity); and between trade unions and the State. In authoritarian States—whether of a corporative character (Fascist Italy, Spain, Portugal) or of a collectivist character (Russia)—only those trade unions which conform to state policy can operate, and they consequently become, in practice, instruments of that policy.
Before Fascism, the legal order governing professional associations in Italy was inspired by liberal principles. In practice, freedom of association, including trade-union association, was recognized, with the qualifications introduced by social legislation, including trade-union legislation, so long as activity remained within the speculative sphere, while criminal action or an attempt at criminal action was subject to repression. Labor relations were regulated by ordinary civil law, with the qualifications introduced by social legislation.
As regards freedom of professional association, the idea of a special recognition of professional associations and leagues was becoming firmly established—an obvious and practically useful idea, but one that was not implemented, especially because of the opposition of the socialist trade unions (alien to an orderly legal action, as they feared the curtailment of their activity with the consequent legal responsibility) and because of the weakness of the liberal governments. Two bills of particular importance were introduced in 1902, the first concerning the contract of employment and the second the prevention and settlement of agricultural strikes; they provided for the recognition of associations and leagues as legal entities, with the capacity to enter into contracts and to act in court. Other proposals followed, drafted on the initiative of the Superior Council of Labor. Although no recognition in law was in fact achieved, recognition, at least de facto, occurred through the appointment of representatives of particular associations to consultative bodies of the public administration, beginning with the aforementioned Superior Council.
Only with a decree issued by the last liberal cabinet (Facta) on 29 Oct. 1922, no. 1529, was the registration of professional associations finally regulated. These were divided into associations of industrial and agricultural employers and proprietors, and associations of merchants, directed toward safeguarding collective interests in resolving problems relating to relations between capital and labor; and associations of workers and employees of private enterprises, directed toward safeguarding professional interests and improving the economic condition of their members. The decree, however, was never applied, owing to the absence of implementing regulations and, above all, to the political upheaval carried out by Fascism in the trade-union sphere as well, through the successive establishment of the so-called corporative State.
Although, as a matter of formal principle, trade-union or professional organization was regarded as free, in practice non-Fascist trade unions had no possibility of survival, since only the legally recognized trade union (that is, the Fascist trade union), subject to state control, had the right to represent legally the entire category of employers or workers for which it had been established; to protect their interests before the State and other professional associations; to conclude collective labor agreements binding on all members of the category; to impose contributions upon them; and to exercise public-interest functions in relation to them (Carta del lavoro, declaration III).
VI. LEGAL REGULATION OF TRADE UNIONS IN THE ITALIAN CONSTITUTION
The new Constitution did not give prominence to the trade unions, which would instead have attained great importance if a system of political representation by socio-economic categories in the Senate of the Republic had been adopted, as some had proposed.The freedom of trade-union organizations (art. 39) is a very general principle found enunciated in constitutions of the most varied orientations. In the present democratic order, this principle is to be understood as: a) freedom to establish and dissolve organizations, to join and withdraw individually, with the possibility of a plurality of trade unions for the same economic-professional category (of workers and employers), all enjoying the same rights; b) freedom vis-à-vis the State, which may subject them only to the obligation of registration with local or central offices, registration conferring juridical personality (under private law, even if with subjective public rights). Another aspect of freedom concerns relations with the parties that might seek to use trade unions as pawns in their political game. The guarantee of independence in this sense remains, obviously, entrusted to the integrity of the governing bodies and to the sensitivity of the members; nevertheless, legal protection may be found in the internal (statutory) organization, which must have a democratic basis as a condition for registration. The statutes must therefore provide for the elective nature of offices and the sovereignty of the assembly; they may also, where appropriate, contemplate and regulate the referendum, while in any event excluding external interference in the community of members. The preparation of the relevant bill for the application of the constitutional principles was very arduous, also in relation to collective agreements (having binding force for all members of the categories concerned if concluded through a unitary organ of the registered trade unions, and in relation to the exercise of the right to strike, art. 40). This bill, presented on 4 December 1951 (no. 2380), is now under consideration by the Chamber of Deputies. It should be noted that it respects the autonomy of the trade unions, beginning with the adoption of their own statutes (and related regulations), whose provisions constitute what is known as the trade-union law of the trade unions themselves; this forms part of trade-union law understood in the broader sense, including, that is, the statutory legal rules of the State (the State’s trade-union law). From a strictly legal point of view, it is the State itself that recognizes the trade union as a juridical person (by an administrative act of constitutive determination, according to the aforementioned bill). From a political-sociological point of view, however, the opinion may rightly be considered correct that, in a certain sense, it is also the trade union that recognizes the State, since, by submitting an application for registration (which is a legally free act and which, if accepted, entails recognition as a person), the trade union declares that it is entering, for all purposes, into the system specifically established by the State in this matter, with the consequent duties as well as rights.
VII. INTERNATIONALISM IN THE TRADE-UNION FIELD
Under the influence of Marxism in the political sphere, workers already in the last century joined together, organizing socialist internationals, with alternating fortunes and orientations and, analogously to the internal motives of the various countries, at times distinctly revolutionary and at times reformist-progressive in character. In the trade-union field there are numerous single-profession organizations (or category federations), answerable to higher confederal bodies, such as, at present, the old World Federation of Trade Unions (F.S.M.), communist in tendency, and the most recently established International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (C.I.S.L.), political and non-confessional. As regards Christian trade unions, after attempts dating back to 1900-1908, the International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (C.I.S.C.) was established in 1920 and is still active (headquarters in Utrecht). Company managers too have for some time had their own organization, as have certain categories of entrepreneurs. Particularly noteworthy here is the movement of Christian-social entrepreneurs (U.N.I. A.P.A.C.: Union International des associations patronales catholiques, headquartered at The Hague).From the juridical standpoint, it should be noted that the principle of trade-union freedom is proclaimed in the so-called International Labour Charter, incorporated into the Peace Treaties of 1919-20 (cf. art. 427 of the Treaty of Versailles and subsequently art. 1 of the 1944 Philadelphia Declaration), a principle specified and developed in the relevant conventions approved at the International Labour Conferences of San Francisco (1948) and Geneva (1949), with special protection. At these Conferences, alongside government delegates, there are also representatives of the most representative organizations of each participating country, both of employers and of workers (v. ORGANIZZAZIONE METEOROLOGICA). It should also be added that the international declaration of human rights (U.N., 18 Dec. 1948) likewise provides for every individual’s right to establish trade unions and to join them for the defense of his interests (art. 23, no. 4). More specifically, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Assembly of the Council of Europe, 25 Aug. 1950) provides, in addition to the aforementioned right, for its exercise as well, in the sense that it may not be subject to restrictions other than those prescribed by law, which constitute measures imposed, in a democratic society, by national security, considerations of public safety, the defense of order and the prevention of crime, the protection of health or morals, or the rights or freedoms of others. Legitimate restrictions may be imposed on the exercise of the right by members of the armed forces, the police, or the State administration (art. 13).
The Convention also provides for international protection through a European Commission and a European Court of Human Rights (art. 22 ff.).
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