It was not only the Cold War: Italian and American trade unionism for the economic development of the country (1947–1960)

Introduction: A theme poorly studied

During the crucial years in which the old agricultural Italian society, for the first time in its history, turned into an advanced industrial society, was introduced to a free market economy and consolidated the foundations of its young democracy, Italian trade unionists from the Confederazione Italiana Sindacati dei Lavoratori (CISL) and some from the Unione Italiana del Lavoro (UIL) along with American trade unionists tried to transform work and business in Italy, introducing a new bargaining, productivity and industrial democracy philosophy, and a ‘new’ type of trade unionism: democratic, strong, independent from political parties and from the State (especially from labor legislation) and ‘participatory,’ caring about the needs of companies and willing to collaborate with the management in their administration (Heckscher 1988, 2001).

It was an attempt that saw both success and failure, but it was a first step toward Italian modernization, and its effects are partly seen today.

Italian historiography, which has always been focused on the political and ideological part of trade unionism in the Cold War era, has only lately become interested in this attempt at economic, cultural and political change by the unions, which lasted about 10 years (from the Marshall Plan onward).

This new trade union movement was different. For example, a lot of Italian union members had the opportunity to make ‘educational trips’ to the USA, organized by the European Recovery Program and consisting of lectures on industrial relations, labor law, company organization and economics, which brought about many reorganizations and contractual innovations. In addition they were able to talk directly with American trade unionists and American managers, and they got to visit American companies.

It was a great process of cultural transmission, adapted to the Italian situation and mentality: the National Trade Unionism School CISL in Florence had a significant role in this context, forming, between 1951 and 1967, hundreds of future trade union leaders of the 1960s and 1970s; famous American books on industrial relations such as those by Commons and Perlmann and human relations were translated into Italian; another important development was the coexistence of Italians and Americans in the International Free Trade Union (ICFTU); also important were all the visits that American trade unionists, mostly Italian–Americans, made to Italy, motivated by the desire to help the development of a new, democratic and participative unionism, to beat communism and fascism and to modernize their old homeland in its new-found freedom. The tools used for these purposes were the Marshall Plan, wage policies for productivity, new human and social relations in the companies and job evaluation in pay bargaining.

However, opposition was strong: first, there was the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL) trade union, supported by the powerful Italian Communist Party, then there was the organization of Italian businessmen (Confindustria). The Italian government was completely unconcerned by the new movement.

Ten years later, much had already changed and the seeds of modernization had been planted: the CISL was the strongest union in the northern modern industries, its ideas prevailed in industrial relations and collective bargaining; Confindustria had formed another organization, the Intersind, which was modern and had large numbers of CISL members working in its office; governments were more sensitive to union demands. However, there were also a lot of failures and disappointments, as the American trade unionists dreamt of creating in Italy a single, strong, democratic and anti-communist trade unionism formed by CISL and UIL and of rapid growth in productivity and human relations policies.

The achievements of the Italian Modernization of Labor and Business happened slowly, though, as the wave of strikes of 1969 and especially the decade of conflict that ensued demonstrate, but the foundations of it were laid as a statement of intent. During the last two decades of the 20th century and into the early 21st, its effects can be seen in areas such as productivity, social dialogue and participatory unionism.

Italy 1950–1960: A country in great transformation

Between 1945 and 1973, there occurred the greatest transformation of the economic and social history of the country, as international literature recognized (Ginsborg, 2006; Van Der Wee, 1989): GDP, exports, infrastructure, industrialization, urbanization, housing policies, land reform, policies for the south of Italy, the opening up to Europe and to the international markets, and above all the mentality and habits (food, clothing, leisure) of Italian society (Gabrielli, 2011).

It was in particular during the 1950s that radical changes leading to the ‘Italian economic miracle’ in just a few years, started to be seen (Castronovo, 2010; Crainz, 2005): from a poor country to a rich, modern, industrial country, including the South which, although it was very different from the Centre-North, saw massive changes in the economy and people’s lives (Cafiero, 1996, 2000).

However, in Italian historiography this period was underestimated for many years by historians in favor of the extreme left or extreme right opposition (Scoppola, 1991), minimizing the historic changes that had occurred, by denying government policies and focusing on the many social and economic problems, on daily political events and various political and ideological aspects of the great battle of the Cold War (Castronovo et al., 1976; Mammarella, 1974). Authoritative studies have underlined, however, that this interpretation did not explain the modernization of Italian society, nor its incredible growth (Romero and Segreto, 1996) and did not give prominence to the role of social forces and to the CISL (Fondazione G Pastore, 1996).

Conscious of these failures, many young Italian historians admit today the positive choices made by governments (Crainz, 2005; Malgeri, 2002) and the particular quality of that political class from De Gasperi (Craveri, 2006) to Fanfani (Foundazione A Fanfani, 2006) to Vanoni (Forte, 2009), etc. Positive choices included: land reform (Bernardi, 2006), policies for the South (Cafiero, 1996, 2000), the housing policy (Di Biagi, 2001), the use of IRI-State Participation (Sapelli, 2001), the Energy Policy Agip-Eni of Enrico Mattei (Sapelli, 1993), the construction of major infrastructure (Castronovo, 2010) and monetary and fiscal policies (Ginsborg, 2006).

Finally, after decades of criticism, the Marshall Plan is now considered positive for Italian modernization (Fauri, 2010), also recognized today by historians of the left, at least for its economic aspects (Romero and Segreto, 1996).

The Italian trade union movement at a crossroads: CGIL, CISL and UIL in the 1950s

This historical review looks at the history of labor and industrial relations, giving new weight to the ‘American’ innovations made in Italy during and after the Marshall Plan by trade unionists and the US government.

Critical to the Great Italian Transformation was, in fact, the business world (Berta, 2001; Sapelli, 1997) and the relations between the labor force and management. Indeed Italian companies and their employees, no longer closed but open to the big European and global markets, sought their way toward modernization: a few of them – such as the manager Adriano Olivetti (Sapelli, 2005; Musso, 2009) and the Organization of Christian Entrepreneurs, UCID (Quartero, 1997) – tried to change and looked at the American experience as a model to follow, especially for ‘human relations’; but The Organization of Industrialists, Confindustria, remained closed to all the changes introduced by the Marshall Plan and the productivity politics (Petrini, 2007), and was always wary of the new European unity, the Schumann Plan of 1951 and the European Common Market of 1957 (Battilossi, 1996b). The picture changed with the arrival of Intersind (Sapelli, 2001).

The Italian trade unions, faced with these events, took two different paths, one following the CGIL, the other one following the CISL. This great union divide was read by labor historians, until the 1980s, only in terms of ideological conflict and partisan alliance between the DC-CISL against the blockade of CGIL-PCI (Turone, 1973), reading in the same way the subsequent political union between 1950 and 1960 (Accornero, 1976).

Only in the 1990s did the conflict since the division of unions in 1948 to 1949 start to be seen as a clash between two opposing cultures and union experiences, born more out of trade union rather than political differences (Antonioli and Ganapini, 1995; Antonioli et al., 1999). And so later, during the 1950s: the conflict was not so much about communism in the CGIL and the CISL friendship with the Christian Democrat governments (Romero, 1987, 1988; Saba, 1988), but because they had two different trade union cultures, two ways of conceiving the task of the union in a modern neo-capitalist society: Trentin, the communist leader of the Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici (FIOM–CGIL), had recognized it had been isolated since 1962, but remained unheeded (Trentin, 1962).

It is admitted that the CGIL, which remained tied to the economic culture of the Third Communist International (Battilossi, 1996a; Starita, 1992; Strinati, 1992), did not understand the big transformation of Italian society and business because it was waiting for the next collapse of capitalism. Hence the CGIL defeats in the factories between 1955 and 1958, beginning with Fiat, were due largely to its labor policy errors (Pepe et al., 2001), but that gave rise to a new strategy (Negri, 2008) and to the CGIL trade union policies of the 1960s and 70s, based on factory conflict (Pepe et al., 2001; Vallauri, 1995). CGIL historians see the 1950s as a time of a ‘real, new foundation’ of the CGIL (Pepe, 2010).

The starting point of the CISL was altogether different (Ferrari, 1984). Blending the philosophy of the Americans Commons and Perlmann and the French Maritain and Mounier (Michelagnoli, 2010, 2011; Totaro, 1996), but adapting these ideas to the particular Italian situation (Formigoni, 1991), the CISL read differently the Italian reality, designing a new labor strategy (Saba, 2000), calling itself ‘new union’ (Zaninelli, 1981) and it even distanced itself from his own catholic tradition: many of CISL’s opponents called it the ‘American trade union’ and accused it of imitating the American system of industrial relations: free bargaining, productivity, industrial democracy, vertical organization, complete autonomy from the State, from the DC Party and from the Catholic Church. Many saw this as just an unquestioning imitation of the US model, but this was not true (Fondazione V Nocentini, 2000; Pasture, 1999; Saba, 1980).

Different again was the case of the small UIL, allied with the Americans but still very dependent on the socialist political culture (Forbice, 1981) and only partially innovative (Vanni, 2011).

The attempted modernization of labor: Victories and defeats

When the Cold War ended in 1989, the same issues remained and are still current. Some examples are: a) policies for productivity and bargaining in the company, now back to the center of the Italian trade union debate, almost like an ‘underground river’ that disappears and reappears periodically (Berta, 1982; Bianchi, 1996); b) industrial democracy and participative unionism, now seen as possible solutions to grow Italian companies and accepted by all social partners (Colasanto, 2008); c) the great victory of CISL in 1954 (Bianchi, 1996; Sapelli, 2001) creating the Intersind against the opposition of Confindustria, which today, with divisions mended, has considerably changed Confindustria’s mentality; d) union management of the labor market and partial management of pensions, once completely controlled by the bureaucracy of the welfare state and now again subject (in part) to collective bargaining; e) the habit of social dialogue between unions, government and Confindustria, inconceivable in Italy before the Marshall Plan and the CISL in the 1950s; and f) the role of women in trade unions (Benzoni, 2005; De Luca, 1992).

In the decades following Italy’s transformation, mistakes and uncertainties of governments and social partners led, as we know, to the great strikes of 1969, the long season of trade union unity and widespread industrial conflict without rules (Accornero, 1992; Pizzorno, 1978). Everyone forgot about the ‘American innovations.’

The dramatic ungovernable situation lasted for over a decade (Craveri, 1982; Saba, 1989) and brought the CISL and UIL, which had been accused in the 1950s of having been ‘American,’ to make a big change in collective bargaining and to resume many themes of the 1950s, often clashing with the CGIL: in 1983–1984 with ‘the Valentine's Day agreement ,’ in 1992–1993 with the arrangements for the Euro, in 2001 and again in 2009 with agreements on the reform of bargaining and social dialogue. The CGIL constantly opposed the changes and did not sign or signed later with reservations (Mascini, 2000). Historians definitely realize today the enduring relevance of many innovations then hastily dismissed as ‘American.’

But historians must also point out the failures of many policies: the failed attempt at an anti-communist union between CISL and UIL (Guasconi, 1999); the agricultural reform implemented by governments and Italian social partners opposed to American technicians (Bernardi, 2006), the increasingly powerful role of legislation in a country with much corporate nostalgia (Graziani, 2007), the permanent difficulty of social dialogue and participation in organizations and in Italian society. Probably the American trade unionists and their government underestimated Italian cultural and historical issues, which are more important in Italy than in America, where pragmatism prevails.

Conclusion: Call for a new phase of studies

The new Italian labor historiography denies many assertions of a substantial failure in the American desire to build a strong democratic and free trade unionism in Italy (Filippelli, 1992; Romero, 1988): at least in the longer term it has been right.

After the long break of the 1970s and 80s, industrial relations in Italy discovered the way to modernization, mostly indicated by those American and Italian trade unionists of the 1950s, who in some ways can be called ‘pioneers.’ And there is still a lot to be discovered in the future, more than just industrial relations, as when a historian found out that productivity policies launched in the 1950s in the Veneto and other parts of Italy (Guasconi, 1999; Romano and Segreto, 1996) helped to bring about in the 1970s and 80s the ‘Italian Miracle’ of the so-called ‘Terza Italia’ or Italy’s ‘distretti industriali’ (Beccattini, 1990), today a model of healthy local development.

What we need now is a new phase of studies in Italian labor history, pulling together the socio-economic and cultural history of Italian trade unionism.