Are workshop councils “doomed”?

In the current issue of L’Atelier, we read an article with the unfortunate title “Sovietism in Italy,” whose subtitle claims that the institution of workers’ councils “seems doomed.”

The article refers to the strike by metalworkers in Turin, which ended in disastrous failure for the workers and was led and conducted by the delegates of the factory “workers’ councils,” which were in the hands of extremists. In fact, the movement was directed against the central trade union and socialist organizations, or at least undertaken without their knowledge, and they were called upon to intervene “only at the moment of failure, and to limit the damage.”

The very conditions of this conflict were discussed at the Congress of the Metalworkers' Federation, which took place in Genoa at the end of May. And, as comrade L.-A. Thomas points out in L'Atelier, the representative of the Confederazione del Lavoro, Gino Baldesi, denounced (report in L'Avanti) the tactics followed, which sidelined the central organizations, declaring it "absurd ‘ to recognize the right of the masses to spontaneously launch a workers’ movement."

We will not dwell on this personal assessment by Gino Baldesi, which we will describe as “strange” so as not to also use the word “absurd.” For if “the masses” did not have “the right” to spontaneously launch a labor movement, who then would ultimately have this “right”? “ Yet it is ”the masses“ who toil in the factories; in most cases, it is not the union officials.

But the essential point is to understand how it was possible to deduce from the events in Turin that the workshop councils ”seem doomed."

In our opinion, the failure of the Turin metalworkers' strike proves only one thing: that workshop councils or factory delegates are not the preferred body to lead a strike effectively. That is all!

In large industries and industrial centers, working conditions are so standardized that the same rates, the same stipulations regarding working hours, wages, etc., apply in all workshops and factories in a city, or even in an entire country.

Furthermore, in the wage struggle, it is the labor unions that have nearly half a century of experience. They are the fighting organizations of the proletariat! If, therefore, the staff of a single factory, or of a few factories in a single city, try to start a movement, bypassing the trade unions, it means that something is wrong with the labor movement; there must be a clash of interests and conflict, and in this case the root causes must be sought.

But all this does not mean that workers' councils have no place in factories and workshops.

These councils are not fighting organizations, but production organizations. Their role must be to monitor on site the production of each capitalist entrepreneur, his customers, his markets, the way he obtains his raw materials, and the specific organization of labor. Workers' councils must insist on having their delegate on the board of directors of each company and demand that the balance sheet be drawn up and published without their collaboration, etc., etc.

In this regard, the councils cannot be replaced by the labor union, as the latter is not organized to intervene directly in production.

The events in Turin therefore prove once again—as we have already claimed many times—that workers' unions and shop councils must agree on the role that suits each of them and must, as far as possible, avoid encroaching on each other's territory in the future.