Today the grassroots unions ADL Cobas, SI Cobas, Cobas Lavoro Privato, Cub Trasporti, Sgb have called a 24-hour national strike in logistics. The national collective agreement for the sector expired in March. The unions presented a platform of demands to all the employers’ associations at the end of February, but received no response. The platform provides, among other things, salary increases of 300 euros to at least partially recover inflation; the internalization of workers; the closure of contracts and subcontracts which have made work more precarious with the imposition of the figure of the (false) worker member. This system “has allowed enormous tax and social security evasion, the increase in illegal gangmastering and the growth in the rate of accidents at work”. Also requested are the reduction of working hours with the same salary, greater protection clauses for drivers (primarily the drivers of large couriers) and increases for night work.
The request for a 300 euro increase in wages is accompanied by a drastic criticism of the entire bonus policy of all governments since Covid onwards, and in particular of Meloni. In this regard, the basic unions criticize the confederals CGIL, CISL and UIL who did not demand “a generalized increase in wages” and “followed Confindustria which was asking for a cut in the tax and contribution wedge”.
In a reconstruction drawn up by Si Cobas and Adl Cobas in a document we read that the Draghi government had cut contributions by 2-3%, Meloni from July 2023 increased the cut to 6-7% for gross salaries up to 1923 and 2692 euros per month (but only 2-3% for the 13th and nothing for the 14th) so the overall relief is around 5-6%, which is reduced to around 4-4.8% if we consider that the Contribution exemption is taxed by IRPEF. So there remains a loss of purchasing power of at least around 10% to be recovered. So there are two cases: either the INPS contribution gap is filled by the State, with an additional tax levy (e.g. employees who exceed 28,000 euros, the increase in VAT paid on food and energy goods, which have increased more than the average , and which weigh more on the poor pìj); or the contribution gap is only partially filled, and therefore further cuts will be made to pensions, which are deferred wages. In both cases, the cut in contributions not made to pay to the rich is a fiction whose aim is only to make more net money appear on the paycheck without making the bosses spend an extra euro, who, instead, certainly collect the increase in prices of the products sold, but the wages they pay remain unchanged.
Logistics, at the center of formidable trade union struggles for a decade in Italy, is a sector today dominated by operators moving on multiple fronts: global presence, local distribution networks and an enormous quantity of warehouses. It is a world dominated by giants, but where there is also room for smaller operators who are able to deploy flexibility, speed, competition, ability to integrate with the customer and above all reduce labor costs.
According to Eurostat data, in 2021 the transport sector in Italy had 1 million and 147 thousand employees, of which 902 thousand were in freight transport alone. More precisely, 380 thousand employed in road transport, 365 thousand employed in logistics in general, in warehousing and auxiliary services, 142 thousand employed in postal and courier activities, and 10 thousand employed in water and air transport . From 2013 to 2022, employment levels grew by approximately 12% (from 1,022 to 1,148 thousand, with a recovery after the decline in 2020 due to the Covid crisis.
Very interesting is the updated map of Italian logistics made by the unions in a precious analytical document that accompanied the call for today’s national strike. Logistics is an impressive industry in Italy concentrated in the regions of Northern Italy, around Milan and along the axis of the A4 (Turin-Venice, passing through Milan, Brescia, Verona, Padua) and North-South, in the direction of Piacenza and the Via Emilia. In the rest of the country, the areas of concentration are represented by the main urban centers (Florence and Rome), which in some cases are also port locations, as in the case of Genoa, Naples, Ancona, Bari, Catania and Palermo.
In reconstructing the last period in the global and Italian logistics economy, the grassroots unions observed that the increase in wages obtained thanks to their struggles was not sufficient. Firstly because the increase in conflict has pushed towards an acceleration of the restructuring of the production cycle. At the same time, the increase in digital automation introduced by the major players on the market has increased the reduction in labor costs. This led to an increase in profits and the neutralization of wages obtained thanks to the struggles. “To experience the prospect of a recovery of real wages, also eroded by inflation – observe the unions – the only response to these processes is the reduction of hours, for the same salary”.
In this reading of the economic-political cycle of logistics, another interesting observation is linked to the continuous judicial investigations affecting logistics. These investigations have favored insourcing, but have also been used to further reduce labor costs, through interventions on second-level bargaining with contracting companies. Another point of the strike platform calls for extending the gains achieved by national bargaining to intermediate and lower levels in order to avoid discrimination between workers working at different levels of the production chains.
In the last two years, the intervention of the Prosecutor’s Office has brought to light what the unions have long denounced: the system of contract changes and “Chinese boxes” masks large-scale millionaire scams to the detriment of the State, as well as the workers. The gangmaster system is much more widespread, and is closely linked to migratory flows which are criminalised. This is a strategy, the unions observe in their document, to blackmail this workforce that operates in large numbers in logistics. The trade union struggles of recent years have served to emancipate these people who have managed to achieve dignified living conditions with their commitment and work. Union work in logistics therefore depends on an anti-racist struggle, as is underlined in the document.
From the point of view of the evolution of production forms after Covid and starting from the Russian-Ukrainian ware-commerce has also recorded significant growth in Italy. Amazon reigns and competes directly with distribution and logistics companies. Its power today is also used by hundreds of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies that sell through its services. Nor should the process of intermodal integration with navigation logistics be underestimated. Container shipping appears to be dropped to the ground. Its giants are buying important pieces of the supply chain and are adopting platform selling techniques from third countries.
The analysis of logistics is fundamental to understand that the capitalist strategies in which we talk about costs and revenues without taking into account the fact that it is the workers who have the task of carrying out all the operations. The refrain is always the same: it seems that the goods magically arrive home, that the work is finished, while those who work do it more and more and are paid less and less.
