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Local Italy
2 days ago
- Politics
- Local Italy
Italy's opposition warns of 'democratic crisis' after low referendum turnout
The citizenship referendum, along with four others relating to workers' rights held over June 8th and 9th, drew just over 30 percent of the electorate – far lower than the threshold of more than 50 percent required for their results to be valid. Maurizio Landini, leader of Italian trade union CGIL which had promoted the referendums, slammed the low turnout as a sign of a "clear democratic crisis" in Italy. But the result was celebrated as a victory by Italy's hard-right coalition government, which strongly opposed the proposed reforms and had publicly called on its supporters to boycott the vote. "YOU LOST" Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party posted to Facebook shortly after the results were announced on Monday afternoon, with the letters superimposed over a picture of opposition party leaders who had supported the reforms. Meloni announced last week that she would go to her polling station but not vote in any of the referendums, saying that abstention was 'a right for everyone'. "I don't agree with the subjects of the referendums and, as has always been the case in the nation's history, when you don't agree, abstention is also an option," she said. Of 77 referendums held over the past 50 years, only 39 met the voter threshold, and only four of those were held in the past 30 years. It's unclear how much of an impact the government's abstention campaign had on the turnout in this referendum. Riccardo Magi, leader of the centrist +Europa party, which had campaigned for the citizenship reform, said that "organised abstentionism strengthened by spontaneous abstentionism and lack of information" had won the day. Lorenzo Pregliasco, head of political polling agency Youtrend, told Huffpost Italia that the results showed that the referendum is "a tool in crisis". But there were other factors at play, he warned. "The referendum was politicised, particularly in the last few weeks [...]; the campaign wasn't inclusive of voters who weren't necessarily on the left," he said. "This may have pushed out those voters who were less militant and could have made the difference." It's not uncommon for politicians in Italy to tie support for a referendum to support for their own party – a strategy that's been known to backfire. In 2016, former PM Matteo Renzi was forced to step down after he said that a vote for his referendum on constitutional reform was a vote of confidence in his leadership – and lost. "The only real goal of this referendum was to bring down the Meloni government. In the end, however, it was the Italians who brought you down," Brothers of Italy wrote in the caption to their Facebook post. Meanwhile Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, did her best to present the result as a win for the opposition. "More voters voted for these referendums than those who put Meloni in government in 2022," she told reporters on Monday evening. "Politics that celebrates abstention only hurts itself." Following Monday's result, calls for a reform of referendum rules came from both ends of the political spectrum. "We may need to change the referendum law, we probably need more signatures, not least because we spent so much money to send millions of ballots to Italians abroad that went unused,' said Deputy PM Antonio Tajani. Under current rules, if a petition to change the law collects 500,000 signatures, the government must hold a public vote – which was the basis for introducing the referendum on citizenship. Others said the solution wasn't to lower the threshold for staging a referendum but to lower or even eliminate the voter threshold (or quorum). 'We'll need to adopt a different approach" given that 'no referendum has reached the quorum in recent years,' Benevento Mayor Clemente Mastella said. New rules should include the 'lowering of the quorum, which now seems almost impossible to reach,' he added.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Italian referendum on easing citizenship rules thwarted by low turnout
An Italian referendum on easing citizenship rules and strengthening labour protections has failed after hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni encouraged voters to boycott the vote. As polls closed on Monday, it emerged that many citizens had heeded Meloni's call as only 30 percent of the electorate cast their ballots over two days of voting, far short of the 50 percent plus one needed to make the result legally binding. The outcome was a clear defeat for the centre-left opposition, which had proposed to halve the period of residence required to apply for Italian citizenship from 10 to five years and to reverse labour market liberalisations introduced a decade ago. The prime minister said she was 'absolutely against' the citizenship proposals, announcing she would turn up at the polls but not cast a vote. A stated goal of Meloni's government is to cut irregular immigration, but it has increased the number of immigrant work visas. The general secretary of the Italian General Confederation of Labour union, Maurizio Landini, slammed the low turnout as a sign of a 'clear democratic crisis' in Italy. 'We knew it wouldn't be a walk in the park,' he said, stressing that millions of Italians had turned up to fight for change. Meloni's Brothers of Italy party posted on social media that the 'only real goal' of the referendum was to bring down the Meloni government, and it added, alongside pictures of opposition leaders: 'In the end, it was the Italians who brought you down.' Opinion polls published in mid-May showed that 46 percent of Italians were aware of the issues driving the referendums. Activists and opposition parties accused the governing coalition of deliberately dampening interest in sensitive issues that directly affect immigrants and workers. Campaigners for the change in the citizenship law said it would help the children of non-European Union parents better integrate into a culture they already see as theirs. Changes to the laws would have affected about 2.5 million foreign nationals. Other questions in the referendum dealt with labour-related issues like better protections against dismissal, higher severance payments and the conversion of fixed-term contracts into permanent ones. Opposition forces had hoped that promoting these causes would help them woo working class voters and challenge Meloni, something they have struggled to do since she came to power in 2022. Many of the 78 referendums held in Italy in the past have failed due to low turnout.
Reuters
07-02-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Big but toothless - Italy's unions blamed for wage stagnation
Summary Companies Italy's inflation-adjusted wages below 1990 level Union membership high, especially among pensioners But main unions unwilling to take on employers, experts say Smaller, more aggressive unions gaining traction ROME, Feb 7 (Reuters) - After three decades of wage stagnation, workers in Italy have plenty to protest about, yet strikes over pay are rare and seldom last more than a day, prompting growing questions about the role of the country's trade unions. Italy is the only advanced country where inflation-adjusted wages declined between 1990 and 2020, data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows, leading to weak consumer spending and anaemic growth. Pay has picked up more recently, rising by 9% between the third quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of last year, but it still lagged inflation and wage growth of 14% in Germany and 11% in France, according to German central bank data. Economic factors are partly to blame, including Italy's employment rate of just 67%, the lowest in the 20-nation euro zone and giving workers little bargaining power. Yet many labour experts and workers say the unions also bear a heavy responsibility. "Trade unions in Italy have mutated to become mainly service providers," said Filippo Barbera, a sociology professor at Turin University. "They help you do your tax returns and calculate what your pension will be, but they won't take on employers to secure salary rises." After a colourful, banner-waving national strike on November 29 against planned cuts to government spending on social security, public services and investments, Maurizio Landini, the fiery head of the largest union confederation, the CGIL, vowed to"turn the country upside down." The protest disrupted public transport, schools and hospitals, but like virtually all strikes in Italy, it only lasted a day and achieved no tangible results. A CGIL spokesman said Italy's poor wage growth was mainly due to years of labour reforms that had weakened job protection. The union has instigated a national referendum to vote on whether to repeal reforms that made firing staff easier and promoted short-term contracts. The ballot must be held between April 15 and June 15, but the government has not yet set the date. The CGIL is also pushing for legislation to prevent unduly low wage contracts, though this has little support among the right-wing ruling coalition and no bill has yet been presented to parliament. While union power has declined worldwide in recent decades, analysts say strikes are more focused and effective in countries such as Germany, France and the United States, even though they have far lower union membership than Italy. Staff at U.S. plane maker Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab in November secured a 38% pay rise over four years, after a seven-week walkout, while in Germany thousands of workers at carmaker Volkswagen held rolling strikes against layoffs before finally reaching a deal in December. PENSIONER-HEAVY UNIONS Italian union membership is relatively high, at around a third of all workers, but big numbers don't add up to militancy. French unionisation is only a third of Italy's, but France is among the European countries in which most days per year were lost to strikes in 2020-2023, European Trade Union Institute data shows. Italy stopped providing its data in 2009. A study by Katia Pilati, a sociologist and strike expert at Trento University, found that over 90% of major strikes in Italy lasted a day or less, while in the United States 80% last two days or longer. Almost half the CGIL's 5.1 million members are pensioners, whose interests are represented by the union when it lobbies the government. Retirees also make up over a third of the other main confederations, the CISL and the UIL. Salvatore Amoruso, a 40-year-old logistics warehouse worker in Rome, left the CGIL with a group of colleagues in 2015 to join the more militant Cobas grass-roots organisation, which he said fought much harder for its members from a raft of sectors from health workers to metal workers. "We have almost doubled our wages and obtained lunch vouchers, holiday pay and sick leave," Amoruso said. "It's been a minor revolution in terms of pay, conditions and dignity." TOO POOR TO STRIKE Italy's workers are in a vulnerable position. As in other countries, they get no pay when they strike, but unlike in Germany and France, neither do the unions organise meaningful strike funds to compensate them for the lost income. This means many low-paid workers feel they cannot afford to strike, said Vincenzo Ferrante, who teaches trade union law at Milan's Cattolica University. "It's not hard to understand why there have been so few drawn-out Italian strikes in the last 30 years," he said. "Most last a day, half a day, or just a few hours." Trento University's Pilati said Italian stoppages tend to be "defensive", aimed at protecting jobs and working conditions, rather than geared to getting a pay rise. Germany has more structured and effective procedures: if initial negotiations over a pay claim are unsuccessful, a union will typically call one or two "warning strikes," normally lasting a single day. "These are intended to tell the employer the union means business and is ready to open a real fight," said Thorsten Schulten, who teaches labour policy at Germany's Tubingen University. If that does not produce the desired effect, the union calls an open-ended strike which can sometimes run for weeks. In Italy, national wage contracts are routinely renewed with a delay of months or even years, producing a constant erosion of purchasing power. At the end of 2024, the contracts of over half the 13 million Italian workers covered by collective wage agreements had expired, according to national statistics bureau ISTAT. The average delay in renewing them was 22 months. The large unions have accepted this situation for years. "To make things better we need more strikes, not fewer," said Emiliano Brancaccio, an economics professor at Naples University.
