Schlein and the Landini method: here is the platform at work to unite the left

Call it the Landini method. Confederate unions don’t always get along. Only yesterday the secretary of the Uil Pierpaolo Bombardieri accused his colleague of the Cisl Luigi Sbarra of “talking well to the yellow unions that make pirate contracts”. In practice, he accused him of convergences with non-representative acronyms that contribute to the exploitation of workers. But then again relations between the big three unions are not always easy (the CISL is often on less maximalist positions). Yet, for some time now, the CGIL, CISL and UIL have had a single platform. A package of measures that, without distinction, they present to governments every time and for which they take to the streets together. Here, now Elly Schlein seems to want to do the same thing to unite the left front of the parliamentary arc, from Calenda to Fratoianni.

After obtaining the signatures of all (Renzi excluded) on a common proposal on the minimum wage last Friday, now the secretarywho today gathered his followers in Ventotene, prepares a package of proposals to also build its platform, the platform of the future wide field. There are three main ideas, the only one that has slightly less vague contours is that on equal parental leave. The rest for now concerns smoky concepts, from protection of the jobs of online platforms, to the taxation of annuities “which must not be a taboo”, up to investments in health care. While waiting for details, these are the directors who will guide the proposals to bring to Conte, Calenda, Fratoianni, Bonelli and Magi. New agreements for a unitary platform of the wide field like that of the Confederates.

To design this platform, Schlein expects to hear from “the social partners”, CGIL in the lead, during a series of meetings dedicated to industrial policies that will begin on 6 July. And he wonders if in the end the two platforms, the union one and Schlein’s one, are similar. In any case, it is unlikely that the proposals can really be implemented, Conte already said it yesterday on the minimum wage: “The goal is far away because the government is against it”. And in the meantime, however, a concrete political proposal is being made with which Schlein hopes to return as a protagonist, leader among left-wing parties and a point of reference not only for the union, but also for that world of associations, which Conte has been able to caress in recent months, also thanks to the position of the Democratic Party on the war in Ukraine. It is no coincidence that at the last meeting between the two, yesterday in Roma Tre, the president of the M5s underlined with a certain malice the common position of the Meloni government and the Democratic Party on the conflict. While this morning from Ventotene Schlein, while reiterating his “full support for Ukraine against Putin’s invasion”, invoked the need for “Europe to become the bearer of peace”.