ABSTRACT
The resilience of union unity accounts for the success registered by the Italian labor movement in retaining the gains obtained during and after the 'hot autumn'. The Italian union movement is, however, far from homogeneous. 'Unity in heterogeneity' is an appropriate formula for characterizing its present-day structure. The purpose of this chapter is to outline and appraise the strategy of the Italian unions in the changed and changing economic and political context of the 1970s. The CGIL's economic theory was relatively unsophisticated, a pastiche of Keynesian-like and traditional Third International assumptions. Foremost among the latter was the view that Italy was caught up in the 'inevitable crisis of capitalism' due to the growing dominance of monopoly capital. Many of the traditional structural flaws remained the developmental gap between North and South, the backwardness of the agricultural sector, the fragmentation of the work force but were generally neglected in the face of large and accelerating growth rates.
