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Just like the political parties, the three main Trade Unions are responsible for the current situation of the economy. Is it so outrageous to say that? To state that the main Trade Unions are in alignment with the associated political parties is like shouting out "the king has no clothes on": it’s something everyone knows - except for Gargamel Bersani. The smaller Trade Unions and the FIOM have tried as hard as they could, even though they’ve been mocked and kept away from the forums of discussion, to represent the rights of the workers that today no longer have rights. They are the only ones that have got a saving grace. Can it be whispered that if the defence of the workers was the aim of the three main Trade Unions, then the three main Trade Unions have failed miserably? Today they are just ramshackle organisations, privileged interlocutors with the governments that have killed off the dignity, the safety, the social rights, and the health facilities gained through bitter battles lasting decades.
Companies and factories must belong, at least partially, to those who work there. That’s not utopia. It’s already happened and it’s happening now. Anyone who is taken on, must be able to become a shareholder with a tiny quota allocated by the company.
Here Alessandro Di Battista is today telling us a story with a happy ending, a great story about the rights of workers.

Companies have to belong to the people who work in them: here’s an example from Argentina

“In 1979, Luigi Zanon, an Italian entrepreneur started a ceramics factory in Neuquén, in Patagonia. He was well known in Argentina. His family had constructed the amusement park called Italpark at Recoleta, just a stone’s throw from the cemetery where Evita is buried. It’s the biggest amusement park in the continent. Zanon demonstrated excessive patriotism and the Italian flag was a prominent feature in the factory’s logo. The kilns used for manufacturing the ceramics and the roller coasters were all “Made in Italy”. In the first few years, the factory was given a lot of public financing and Zanon, a great friend of the regime, did nothing but thank the dictator Videla for making Argentina into a paradise for investors. While Zanon was enjoying a great life, the same could not be said for the factory workers who were slaving away in the factory for 16 hours a day without rights and without health and safety.
Is there anything in the world that is worse than an alienating job? Certainly: losing the job. The 1990s didn’t start off too well for Zanon or for Argentina. While Brehme scored a pretty doubtful penalty that caused the newly reunited Germany to explode with joy and Maradona and his mates to fall into despair, a 15 year old girl called Roxana Celia Alaimo, lost her life on a ride in Italpark which had not kept up its maintenance regime for many years.

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All the same, the victory of the Zanon workers (in 2009 the government of Neuquén accepted their position and signed a revolutionary document that authorised the transfer of ownership of the factory from the old Mr Zanon to the FASINPAT cooperative) demonstrates to what extent it is necessary to question the “the dominating thought”, the thinking that goes on repeating that the only way to tackle the crisis is to cut the social State, or that a factory cannot be managed by the workers and that to do politics you have to be professionals. I no longer believe in “the dominating thought”. I no longer listen to the fatalists that tell me a project cannot come to fruition because nobody has achieved it before and that changing the world is an illusion. Zanon’s factory workers have achieved this. They are now the owners of a great factory. They have their own destiny in their own hands. It’s been hard. It’s been like climbing a mountain, but if you really think about it you just have to take one step at a time. " Alessandro Di Battista – author of “SICARI A CINQUE euro” {Killers for hire at five Euro} an investigation into the origins of organised crime in Latin America