The CGIL was founded in 1944 as a trade union of democratic reconstruction. The split in the early 1950s consolidated its stable political identity, linked to the communist tradition. That model contributed to important social achievements, from the Workers’ Statute to the defence of rights in industrial work. However, it developed in an outdated Fordist Italy. Today, the labour market is fragmented and precarious. VAT-partnerships, co.co.s and economically dependent self-employment grow without adequate protection. However, the CGIL continues to privilege stable work, showing a structural difficulty in representing contemporary real work.

When politics replaces trade unions

This distance is accompanied by a deeper transformation. The political agenda has progressively taken the place of the trade union agenda. Bargaining loses centrality, while ideological activism grows. Mobilisations serve less and less to improve workers’ material conditions and more and more to occupy media space. The union thus assumes the role of a permanent political actor, reducing the weight of the mandate given by the members.

International causes as political identity

This evolution emerges clearly in the stances taken on international crises. The CGIL tried to head the mobilisation on Gaza and took a line of support for the Venezuelan government against the United States. In these choices, a consistent posture emerges, strongly critical of the West and indulgent towards authoritarian regimes. The link with labour protection is absent, while the ideological dimension becomes central.

Venezuela: the legitimisation of Maduro

In the Venezuelan case, the CGIL leadership has helped legitimise an authoritarian regime by calling Nicolás Maduro ‘president elected by the people’. A definition that ignores a system marked by political repression, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and thousands of deaths documented by international bodies. This line is reflected in the squares. During a demonstration in Rome, some participants verbally, and partly physically, attacked two Venezuelan exiles who were attempting a peaceful confrontation. Insults and intimidation turned a trade union demonstration into a space for overpowering dissent.

Ukraine: peace without distinction

The attitude towards Ukraine shows a further double standard. Faced with an armed invasion, the CGIL limits itself to promoting generic peace demonstrations. Neither a clear distance from the aggression nor a clear closeness to the attacked country emerges. The reference to Article 11 of the Constitution is used to contest the sending of military aid, isolating the repudiation of war from its legal context. International law disappears from public discourse and the distinction between aggressor and aggressed tends to dissolve.

A Crisis of Mandate

The CGIL today is increasingly demonstrating for political causes outside the mandate given to it by its members. Workers demand representation, bargaining and protection. Instead, they receive geopolitical positioning and symbolic mobilisations. The union’s history remains relevant, but it is not enough to justify its present action. Without a profound transformation, capable of bringing labour back to the centre and separating union action from ideological activism, the risk is an irreversible loss of credibility. So much for a tradition that had as its goal the defence of labour, not the imposition of a political vision.