A note from Peter Olney, co-editor of the Stansbury Forum
On Sunday June 8 and Monday June 9 Italians went to the polls nationally to vote on 5 Referendum propositions placed on the ballot by the largest Italian labor federation, the Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori (CGIL) and immigrant and citizenship advocacy groups. Four of the referenda concerned labor employment rights and the fifth was an important initiative to speed up the timeline for obtaining Italian citizenship. Two Italian labor leaders, Salvatore Leonardi and Leopoldo Tartaglia have written a very comprehensive summation of the referenda and the disappointing election result for The Stansbury Forum.

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June 10^th 2025

A resounding, bitter defeat

It’s not easy to explain what happened in Italy on June 8^–9, when Italians went to the polls to vote on five referendums, four of which were promoted by the largest trade union confederation, the Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori (CGIL). Three would have abrogated previous statutes that were conceived to relax the rules for firing and hiring in favor of the employers.  One dealt with subcontracting and social responsibility in the case of accidents at work. The fifth would have reduced from ten to five, the years for resident and regular migrants to obtain full political citizenship. 

Italian law sets a 50%+ threshold (quorum) of eligible voters to consider a consultation valid. The proponents and supporters knew that this would be an uphill battle. Recent precedents were not at all encouraging. We live in times when the average turnout at elections has almost everywhere been getting lower, year after year. Aware of that, all the right-wing Italian parties, which have since 2022 ruled the country, called their voters and sympathizers to boycott the consultation. And the support from centre-left parties was not enough to overcome the combination of physical and even political abstention. At the end of the day, on June 9th, only 30% of those having the right to vote had gone to the urns (around 14 million voters, out of a total number of 46 million eligible electors), with the result that the whole campaign failed. 

Despite the CGIL’s mobilizations and organizational effort, witnessed by a massive and generous return to militant action all over the country, from members and activists, the target at the end was largely missed. No quorum, no victory!! It was clearly a lost battle. The substantial silence from the mainstream broadcast and media, during the campaign, had for certain contributed to such a demoralizing result, but it alone cannot serve as a satisfactory explanation. There is in fact a wider problem with the general functioning of our democracy, like other democracies too, with worrying widespread forms of apathy and mass disaffection for whatever concerns are in the political sphere. This occurs even when key social rights are questioned or, as in this case, potentially reestablished to the benefit of wide sectors of the society, who have been long penalized by years of neoliberal and anti-working class policies.    

It’s small consolation, but it should be remembered anyway, that the 14 million voters is a much larger number than the membership of 5 million in the CGIL. And it is more votes than what the Meloni right-wing coalition obtained in the last political elections (12,5 million) It was more than what all the centre-left parties, lined up in support of the five referendums, got one year ago, at the European elections (11 million).^[1] But one should not make too much of comparisons and draw incorrect conclusions. 

The path to the referendums and their substance

In order to qualify a referendum, Italian law can only be abrogative – partial or total – of norms –existing legislation. Promoters have to collect at least 500.000 officially certified signatures, now facilitated by the possibility of electronic signing. CGIL went far beyond that threshold, getting something like 1.3 million signatures for each of the four questions and requests, whereas the promoters of the citizenship’s referendum – a coalition of civil society organizations – were able to quickly collect 630.000 signatures, thanks to the very new opportunities enabled by electronic democracy.

Once delivered, the abrogative claims must be validated by the Italian Supreme Court, which is required to check whether the questions are sufficiently coherent and legally compatible in their formulation. Originally, the consultation should have also included the request to abrogate the so-called “regional differentiated autonomy”, a law that gave to the Regions many powers and responsibilities previously under the purview of the central State. For technical reasons, which would take too long to describe, this additional request was rejected by the Constitutional Court. This was a big detriment to all the other five questions, since this last issue is extremely sensitive in large parts of the Country, and especially where it is considered detrimental, as in the less economically developed regions of the South. Cut off from it, the remaining five issues had lost the main potential draw, in terms of number of voters. 

What were these five referenda about, exactly? With regard to the four concerning firing and hiring at work, the intention of the promoters (CGIL) was to drastically reduce precarity, making dismissals more costly than they’ve become after the reforms of 10 years ago, with the return to some old limitations in the use and abuse of the fixed term contracts, as they are not now required to be somehow justified, for the first year, by some technical or organizational need from employers. Furthermore, in order to strengthen the social responsibility and due diligence of all companies, when outsourcing and subcontracting parts of their production cycle, they’d be called on to support extra costs when a worker suffers from an accident at work, in addition to what mandatory coverage exists from the National Institute of Insurance against the Accidents at Work (INAIL). 

Surprisingly enough, most of these existing measures, aimed at relaxing the old labor protections and at increasing the work flexibility, were introduced by centre-left Governments, in times when they were inspired by a neoliberal ideology and leadership of the pivotal Democratic Party (PD). Matteo Renzi, Premier at the time (2014-15), and his encompassing labor reform (known as the “Jobs Act”), were the main target of the referendum campaign. Importantly, with the solid support of the new leadership of the PD, after its leftward turn, under the new secretary, Elly Schlein.        

More in Detail

1.   The first referendum aimed to abolish the legislative decree derived from the Jobs Act (2015), where it replaced the workers’ right to be reintegrated in his job and workplace, in a case where a judge rules that the worker’s dismissal is not based on performance or economic downturn and reorganization This right was guaranteed by the old, famous Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute of 1970, amended in 2012 and then completely abrogated in 2015. Thereafter, for all the employees hired since then, the protection will only consist in getting a monetary compensation, between a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 36 months salary, considering  seniority, with the only exclusion of discriminatory dismissals, for de facto gender, racial, religious, political, etc. reasons, where the right to be reintegrated remains in force. Voting “yes” aimed to reinsert the right to rehire, as the normal remedy in case of unfair dismissal, with the monetary compensation as the exception. 

2.   The second question was about the unfair dismissals in small enterprises with less than 16 employees, where the law – considering the close personal implications in the work relationships and the minor financial capacities of the entrepreneurs – has never provided for the reintegration but only for some monetary compensation, between 2 and 6 monthly salaries. Voting “yes” aimed to give the judge the possibility to mandate compensation in excess of 6 months, in consideration of various circumstances, such as the worker’s family composition or the firm’s ability to pay. In the past, the small size of the firm was assumed as an undeniable feature of the limited financial capacity of the business. This is not always the case any longer, as in an era of digital and smart start-ups of a new generation, it’s perfectly possible to formally hire a small number of employees, outsource a lot of freelancers and to produce stratospheric turnover. See the story of the Silicon Valley economy, as an example in this regard.    

3.   The third referendum aimed to limit the proliferation of the fixed-term contracts, abolishing the laws that, from 2014 onwards, allowed the employer to use this contract for the first 12 months, without giving any technical or organizational justification. For the CGIL, fix-term contracts are today a true plague of the labor market and employment relationships. Most of them have an extremely short duration, especially in the tertiary, service and low pay sectors, with the result of depriving the workers of any possibility to manage their life and making them too vulnerable to get organized or ask for the respect of their rights. Voting “yes” aimed to reintroduce a cause, technical or organizational, since the beginning, when hiring with a fix-term contract. In other words, the objective was to make open-ended, stable contracts, the normal and predominant form of employment.  

4.   The fourth question asked to eliminate the norms that leave out the culpability by the buyer and contractor for a labor accident occurring in subcontractor facilities. Italy is a country with a very large number of accidents at work, with a tragic daily national average of three fatal accidents. The majority of these fatal accidents occur in small enterprises, usually part of a chain of subcontractors. 

5.   Not less important was the fifth referendum, aiming to give migrants the right to attain Italian citizenship after five, years as in most of the comparable European countries, instead of the ten years required today. This is a very sensitive issue, affecting something like 2.5 million foreigners regularly living in Italy with their children, attending school, sport activities and everything but excluded from being considered “Italians”. 

In the first four questions the number of  “yes” was massively prevailing over the “no”, with majorities ranging between 87 and 89 per cent. Of course, don’t forget that most of those against opted for boycotting the consultation, by not going to vote. Remarkably, this was not the case for the fifth question, about migrants and citizenship, where the “No” reached 34.5%.This is a very disappointing result, which leads to some critical and preoccupying reflection about the incidence of xenophobia, also within wide segments of the working class, including the unionized blue collar and centre-left electorate. It’s a worldwide and well-know trend; certainly in the US, in times of mounting Trumpism, but not only there. 

Exultation vs. dejection

It’s too early to fully understand and evaluate the consequences of this heavy defeat. Obviously, the right wing Government, parties and media have been exulting, pretending to deduce that “the Italians” approve their politics, against the “ideological” CGIL positions, ignored or rejected by a large majority of the electorate. They flaunt some good employment data, ignoring the true quality of many jobs, terribly affected by precarity and very low wages. Some “reformist” commentators, from neoliberal positions and inspirers or makers of the under scrutiny reforms of 10-15 years ago, such as the former Premier Renzi in person, contested the contents of the referenda, accused it of being outdated and anachronistic, since the true problem today are very low wages, and not job stability. Concern for which, of course, is of great importance to the CGIL too, which is engaged on that topic in collective bargaining. But the CGIL is also aware that workers precarity and worker blackmail are some of the main reasons for such a long-lasting wage stagnation. 

Even the referendum instrument itself as it is conceived today is now under question, in the days following the vote Utilized more than in other comparable country in Europe, Italian referenda have always failed to reach the quorum since 1999 – with just one single exception in 2011 (on the water as a public good) – with a very low average participation (below 30%) of those having the right to vote. The threshold of 500.000 signatures, set in a time when the population was of 30 million, seems to be too low and easily reachable, especially now that electronic signatures are allowed, and disproportionate to the millions of votes required to be valid. One of the discussed solutions could be to double the number of signatures and to lower the quorum (40%+1) for the result to be valid.     

The mood in the world of the promoters, the day after, is understandably of delusion and dejection. The effort of the big organizational machine had been huge and thus the high hopes, at the eve of the vote. Nevertheless, the willingness to keep on fighting is for certain not dead and buried, as the referenda issues can be considered as a step, though missed, in the everyday struggle to achieving better jobs and workers’ rights. The outcome of this battle has been undoubtedly negative, but its objectives are not deleted from our agenda. We can and must in fact capitalize on some of the good things we achieved with this campaign. The reputation, for instance, of the CGIL and its reliability in representing and advocating the weaker and most vulnerable sectors of our society has been enhanced. To bring the workers’ rights and dignity back again to the top of the list in the public discourse, in a time saddened by wars and epochal challenges, can be also considered a positive. The energy and the enthusiasm was profuse from a new generation of militants and activists who campaigned, street-by-street, house-by-house. The practice of a new model of social movement unionism, open and in alliance or in coalition with other associations of civil society, students and NGOs, as for instance in the intersectional battle for justice on the side of the migrants or young precarious worker women. It was no small feat to have stimulated and pushed the centre-left parties to gather and share a common political campaign – with finally the workers’ rights and conditions as a key identitarian issue – can be listed on the column of the partial success of this story.     

Lost is the immediate battle for changing bad laws, what remains is to use the traditional tools and battlefields in the field of industrial relations. With collective bargaining at all levels, as the key arena for union action and the members’ militancy. We don’t give up. La lotta continua 

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^[1] The 14 million voters refers to the total turnout for the vote, not the number of voters that supported the abrogative referenda which of course will be less because within that total turnout are voters who voted “no” on some or all of the   questions.

^[2] CGIL institute for economic, social and historic research and trade union education and training 

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