2020 has been a very difficult and complicated year that has seen us under pressure and the problems certainly do not tend to decrease. After the most acute phase that meant the loss of many human lives especially among the most fragile people, the elderly, uncertainties and fears have taken over for the effects and pandemic repercussions on employment, the economy and the resulting social impact.
The lockdown period where the habits and customs of each of us have been forced to change. With the partial blocking of the production system, the school system and services, with many people stuck at home and unable to move. An unexpected and unprecedented condition for all of us, which has also forced us to reflect on the meaning of our existence, on its precariousness and on the mission. An obligation imposed on women and men engaged in the task of representing, protecting citizens, families, workers and work.
Despite the initial confusion, the union was there: we never abandoned the field, even in many cases carrying out substitute roles in a panorama where many organizations and institutions were not put in a position to give the necessary support to the many emerging needs.
Remaining available to the many people in the cities and suburbs in the most difficult moments has always been and will always be our priority, even now that the situation is once again difficult and complicated. We have tried to deal with the situation with pragmatism and responsibility by adapting our organizational and work methods to the new conditions and rules. The operators of the patronages, of services in general, the delegates, who from their offices, companies or from home have always continued to carry out their role, dealing with an emergency situation and sometimes operating in dramatic conditions. Proof of this are the many agreements on safety protocols shared and signed with private companies and public administrations that have allowed the continuation of production and service activities, in addition to the thousands of agreements to activate social safety nets.
This has a very specific meaning: the union is there, even in the most difficult situations it was able to deploy the best resources and energies. The first phase of the pandemic certainly caused a trauma, unexpected and in many cases distressing, a reaction of fear but also of solidarity because we all felt in the same conditions. I remember the chants from the balconies.
The second wave was a repetition of the trauma, but fear and uncertainty have increased and solidarity is fading. We are witnessing a collective movement: important parts of society are moving, certainly pressured by fear, but differently from before motivated by anger and division.
It is a fight between factions, just look at the one triggered between employees and self-employed workers, with the finger pointed in particular at public employees, who have gone from heroes to hyper-guaranteed, dusting off the famous jargon of the time-card or meal voucher tricksters.
Certainly something has been missing in communication and in the construction of a new social fabric that the extraordinary nature of this crisis requires us to face together, institutions and social parties. The demonstrations of these days are certainly the expression of a more widespread dissent, but in a situation of generalized discontent, the risk that someone blows on the brazier of protest to transform a right to dissent into an opportunity for disorder and urban guerrilla warfare to the advantage of those pursuing objectives of destabilization and chaos, uniting the interests of criminal organizations with those of the most extreme political fringes, is high. We hope that common sense prevails, that no one irresponsibly exploits certain forms of dissent: anyone who holds an institutional or representative political role must have as their goal that of social cohesion.. Our President of the Republic Mattarella is right when he says that this is not the time to divide because beyond the understandable fears of the people the enemy to fight certainly remains the virus.
We are facing global changes, accelerated by the pandemic crisis, it is incomprehensible to entrench ourselves in localist or even worse sovereignist positions, we are forced to enter a time of innovation and transition that can be transformed into opportunities if we are capable and will be able to address the fragilities that our province has accumulated in recent years.
And this is why CGIL CISL UIL of Ferrara insistently ask for a meeting with the administrations to discuss the management of the second wave of infections, health and safety, budgets, economic recovery, claiming the need for a new Social Pact for the territory, to identify together the real priorities.
Only with a true concerted policy can we try to pursue economic and social policies that support development, environmental sustainability, demographic rebalancing, quality of work, the adaptation of welfare to the new context characterized by new vulnerabilities and fragilities, the reduction of inequalities.
A Social Pact that achieves broader and shared objectives that go beyond the mandate of those who administer and won the elections.
This is the objective pursued by the CISL, an organization independent from politics but not neutral. We will not be carried away by the narrative that in Ferrara there is only one union, the CGIL, and that it does party politics, rather than union politics. With CGIL and UIL we shared a territorial platform in 2017 and signed the pact for Work Focus Ferrara in 2018 together with the Emilia Romagna Region, the Municipalities, the Province and the Employers' Associations. The category federations of CISL CGIL and UIL represent and protect workers, negotiate to improve economic conditions, claim the dignity of work and this has nothing to do with party politics. If we really want to stand alongside those who work and pay taxes, those who contribute to the economy of the territory, we must first of all commit to creating opportunities for dignified work, fairly paid, that protects health and safety, with respect for the person.
Even if the given condition forces us to deprive ourselves of the possibility of meeting in person, we can do so with the mediation of a video of a microphone or a webcam. Sharing a Protocol of Industrial Relations, proposed by the Confederal Union over a year ago to all the Municipal Administrations of the province, which mutually commits the parties, in respect of the rolesit's possible.
It would certainly be more profitable than the vain attempt to divide the Union, than filling Facebook pages in pursuit of “likes”, than communicating through the press.
Let's use time (and verb) to build bridges and not walls. For the common good.
The General Secretary CISL Ferrara Bruna Barberis
