Francesco Petrini

Mercantilism and Class Struggle: Italy in the International Economy, 1960–1990

The outbreak of the world-wide economic crisis in 2008 and its later worsening brought the topic of Italy’s ‘economic decline’ to the forefront of public debate The most common explanations of this decline revolve round the inability of Italian society to adapt to the new conditions caused by the advent of the ‘second wave of globalisation’ after the 1970s. Emphasis falls on the burden of public debt, the inadequacy of the reforms of Italy’s economic and social institutions (privatisation, flexibility in the labour market, market liberalisation and deregulation) and on the need for investment in education. Here, we adopt a different outlook, one which hinges on class interests and the conflict between them. The chapter covers the development of the Italian economy from 1945 to the 1990s, focusing in particular on the period starting with the crisis which put an end to the ‘economic miracle’ in 1963 and ends in 1992, when the lira left the European Monetary System. This was a period of sustained, and unprecedented, growth for the Italian economy, during which Italy caught up with other advanced industrial economies. At the same time, those were the years in which we can find the roots of the problems which have afflicted the Italian economy in the last two decades.

Oil: Too Important to be Left to the Oilmen? Britain and the First Oil Crisis, 1970–3

In autumn 1973, Britain’s Conservative Government was going through hard times. The difficult domestic situation, with the clash with the unions over the government’s anti-inflationary policy, was made worse by the cuts in oil production and the price hike decided by the petroleum exporting countries. In this context, on Sunday 21 October, the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, received at his country residence, the chairmen of British Petroleum (BP) and Shell Transport, Sir Eric Drake and Frank McFadzean. The ensuing conversation was stormy.

Demanding Democracy in the Workplace: The European Trade Union Confederation and the Struggle to Regulate Multinationals

On Wednesday, 17 December 1980, at 1.30 in the afternoon, the trade union representatives at the Citroen assembly plant in Forest near Brussels were summoned to an emergency meeting of the Conseil d’entreprise, the Works Council. At this meeting, the management announced the immediate closure of the plant, which was part of the French multinational group Peugeot-Citroen. According to a representative of the Christian Trade Union Confederation, ‘this news was a catastrophe for the plant workers who were faced with a brutal decision taken abroad [in Paris]’.1 The closure of the Forest plant with its 905 workers and more than one million cars produced since 19262 came unexpectedly for both the workers and the local management. A Belgian collective agreement of March 1972 had in fact established workers’ information and consultation rights in advance of decisions such as over the closure of a plant.3 However, as a survey compiled by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) pointed out, ‘this collective agreement is applicable only nationally and to local management and the latter did not take the decision but merely carried it out … The local management in Belgium … simply did not have the necessary authority to conduct independent negotiations with the employees’ representatives.’4 The ETUC report concluded: ‘The closure of the Citroen plant in Forest very clearly proves the need for a binding directive to regulate the information and consultation rights of workers beyond national frontiers.’5