Franzosi 89, Strike Data in Search of a Theory - The Italian Case in the Postwar Period.pdf

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329289017004021989 17: 453Politics Society

Roberto FranzosiPeriod

Strike Data in Search of a Theory: The Italian Case in the Postwar

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Strike Data in Search of a Theory: The ItalianCase in the Postwar Period

ROBERTO FRANZOSI

INTRODUCTION

In his play Six Characters in Search of anAuthor, Pirandello describes the

exchange between a family of actors and a producer:

Producer: ... Who are you? What do you want?Father: We are here in search of an author.

Producer: In search of an author? Which author?

Father:Any author, sir.Producer: But there is no author here.... We are not rehearsing a new play....Stepdaughter: So much the better! Then so much the better, sir! We can be your new play

Stepdaughter: Believe me, sir. We are really six characters... and very, very interesting!...Producer:And where is the script?Father: It is in us, sir. The drama is in us. We are the drama and we are impatient to act

it-so fiercely does our inner passion urge us on.1

Figure 1 presents 25 characters,25 yearly shapes 2 of strikes in Italy from 1954to 1978 in search of a theoretical explanation.As many statisticians have argued,

I would like to thankAnnAlthouse, Denis OHeam, and Joel Rogers for their help in preparingthis manuscript. I am particularly indebted to Erik Wright.

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data contain important messages, sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden andobscured. The drama is always in the data-the only question is can we recognizeit? &dquo;The statistician should fall in love with his data,&dquo; writes Jerkins 3 Courtship

has its rituals, and in exploring data pictures and graphical representations are anindispensable part of the ceremony. &dquo;Pictures that emphasize what we already

Figure 1Annual strike shapes (Source: Strike and employment figures have been takenfrom Annuario Statistico Italiano, ISTAT.)



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know... are frequently not worth the space they take. Pictures that have to be goneover with a reading glass to see the main point are wasteful oftime and inadequate

of effect. Pictures of data should force their messages upon us.&dquo;4 In this respectthe message of the pictures ofFigure 1 is loud and clear. The 25 strike shapes tellus at least five things:

1. The shape of the 1962 and 1966 boxes is larger and flatter than any of the

others.

2. The volume of the boxes (technically defined as the product of the three sides

of the box) is lower during the 1950s than the 1970s.

3. The overall size of the boxes

(thevolume of

strikes)increases in 1959, 1962,

1966, 1969, and 1973 with respect to those of surrounding years.

4. The overall shape of the boxes during the 1975-1978 period is significantlydifferent from those of other years.

5. The 1969 box is much bulkier than any of the other 24 boxes. Is this in line

with our expectations? Does this find an explanation in available striketheories?

In this paper I discuss several theories of industrial conflict: business cycle,

institutionalization of conflict, and political exchange theories. I show that eachtheory has something to contribute to our understanding of Italian strikes, al-

though none can fully account for the temporal dynamic of strikes in postwar Italyand each explains only a particular facet of industrial conflict. I will finally showthat a particularkind of Marxist theory ofconflict provides a more comprehensiveexplanation for the available data.

BUSINESS CYCLE THEORIES

Probably the oldest and most widely applied theory of strikes is the business

cycle theory.At the beginning of this century the French economist Rist wrote:&dquo;the rise and fall of strike activity is related to the fluctuations of unemployment,because it is through the rise and fall of unemployment that economic hardshipor prosperity will affect workers.&dquo;6 The little comparative empirical evidenceavailable at the time seemed so compelling to Rist that he wrote: &dquo;In the lack of

reliable data on unemployment one could use the number of strikes as an

approximation,so close are the movements of unemployment and strike ac-

tivity&dquo;? Unfortunately, Rists work did not become common knowledge in thefield. Strike research was to focus for many years on the relationship between

strikes, prices, and production. Only some 50 years later did Rees popularize theidea of an inverse relationship between unemployment and strikes.

According to Rees, in times of rising employment workers can more easilyfind jobs elsewhere in case of retaliatory actions on the part of employers and/or



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find part-time jobs during a strike.Employers, on the other hand, are morevulnerable as they risk losing their share of an expanding market by incurring astrike and an interruption in production. For all these reasons, during the upswing

phases of the cycle, workers are at an advantage relative to employers and areconsequently more eager to strike. 9 The basic hypothesis that relates strike

activity to the business cycle has been successfully tested for the United States

byAshenfelter and Johnson in a seminal work. 10According to the specificationof theAshenfelter-Johnson model, the quarterly number of strikes is a functionof the current rate of unemployment, a moving average of real wages over recent

quarters, and a set of dummies to capture the seasonal pattern of strikes.

Equation 1.1 of Table 1 shows the results of econometric estimates of this

type of model for the Italian case obtained using theAlmon technique (see theAppendix for data sources and methodology). The explanatory power of themodel is quite high (R 2 = .79) and both the Durbin-Watson and Wallis statisticsexclude problems of either first or fourth-order serial correlation. The significanceof the set of seasonal dummies confirms that strike indicators are characterized

by short-term cyclical fluctuations mainly due to institutional reasons. Strike

activity is lowest during the summer months of the third quarter, when most

factories shut down for summer vacation.The coefficients ofboth the wage and

the unemployment rate variables are significant and with the expected signs.12 Inparticular, the sign and significance of the coefficient of unemployment rateconfirm that the number of strikes is significantly related to the state of the labormarket and to the business cycle.

How can these results contribute to explaining any of the five patternsdiscernible in the strike shapes of Figure I? How can a test of a business cycletheory prove anything, since this test is based on strike frequency only, whilestrike shapes are based on duration and size, as well as frequency? To answer

these questionswe must understand a little more of the economic context in whichstrikes occurred in Italy during the period under consideration. 13 I will providethis historical overview below and show that the business cycle explains at leastthree of the patterns of Figure 1: the low levels of conflict during the 1950s, the

longer strike duration of 1966, and the increased volume of 1959 and 1969.

During the late 1940s and 1950s the Italian economy was characterized byexport-led growth, very high levels of unemployment, a small internal consumer

market, and high levels of investments. Throughout the 1950s Italy, along with

Japan, was among the fastest growing economies in the West. By the end of thedecade, the Italian economy had fully recovered from the war effort and the labor

market was tightening up. The 1959-1962 years were the period of the economicmiracle. Themoodof a country overtaken with the promise ofunrestrained wealthwas masterfully portrayed in Fellinis La Dolce Vita. But as the labor market was

tightening up, labor could afford being more militant, free of the fears of



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457

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7/29

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unemployment. Italian employers resisted workers demands, unaccustomed as

they were to high levels of labor militancy. 14 The 1959 contract renewals weremarked by particularly harsh confrontations. Even harsher was the next round of

collective contracts in 1962. The long duration of strikes in that year bears witnessto the intensity of the struggles. The long duration of the 1962 strike shape is all

the more significant given a tight labor market in the context of an industrial

relations system generally characterized by strikes of short duration. It has been

shown, in fact, that strikes tend to be longer during periods of high, rather than

low, unemployment. 15After the wage increases granted during the 1962-1963rounds of contract renewals, the Bank of Italy pursued deflationary (cooling)

policies-in 1963, itdrastically raised interest rates. The increased cost of money

plunged the economy into a sudden and deep recession in 1964. Employment felleven in heavily industrializedregions, such as Lombardia. 16As a result, the levelsof labor militancy, which had been high during the 1959-1963 rounds of contract

renewals, sharply declined.Thus the 1966 round of contract renewals took place in a context of high

unemployment. The long duration of strikes in that year reflects the conditions ofan unfavorable labor market. By 1968, however, the labor market was tightening

up again. Labor militancy shot up during that year, and in 1969 it exploded in the

autunno caldo (hot autumn) reaching unprecedented levels. By the end of the1960s the Italian economy had reached full maturity. Italy was among the seven

most industrialized countries in the world. During the previous two decades, the

position of labor had changed not only in the labor market (reflecting a better

bargaining situation) but also in the political market, as we shall see. The changein the overall volume of strikes from the 1950s to the 1970s reflects this basic

underlying shift in labors market position. The 1959 and 1962 rounds of contract

renewals acted as a watershed between the two industrial relations regimes.

Thus business cycle theories can account for a great deal of the variation instrike shapes: in particular, the low levels of conflict during the 1950s, the longerstrike duration for 1966, and the increased volume of 1959 and 1969. It seems,

however, that business cycle effects on strike activity in Italy are mediated by the

pattern of collective contract renewals. In other words, labor market conditions

can explain why in the late 1950s and early 1960s strike activity increased with

respect to the 1950s, but not why it did so particularly in 1959 or 1962. To findan answer to this question, we must probe more into the effect of bargaining

arrangements on industrial conflict.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CONFLICT THEORIES

Institutionalization refers to the process of incorporation and subsumption of

labor under the legal and political framework of capitalist societies. Institu-

tionalization in the economic sphere has led to the host of rules and regulations



8/29

459

that govern class relations in the process of production (often referred to as the

system of industrial relations typical of a given society). This system includes,among other things, the definition of the acceptable forms of conflict and

demands, the introduction of regulatory grievance procedures, and the structureof collective bargaining. 18g

In the period covered by this study, the Italian system of industrial relationswas characterized by a two-tier bargaining structure: centralized, industry-widebargaining (for example, metal, textile, chemical workers) and local, plant-levelbargaining. This two-level system of bargaining works in the following way.Atthe national, industry-wide level, minimum wage increases are fixed for a wholeindustrial sector-textiles, chemicals, metalworkers, and so on-along with other

provisions that apply to the industry as a whole, such asworking

hours, vacation

time, and so on. These agreements have a typical three-year duration. Right afterthe signing of collective, industry-wide agreements, plant-level bargaining is

open.At the plant level workers try to exact further concessions from the most

profitable firms, in terms of higher-than-average wage increases, productivitybonuses, and so on.

Clegg has argued that the structure of collective bargaining is related to

specific strike components. 19 Centralized, industry-wide bargaining is related tolarge numbers of workers on strike. It is the workers of a whole sector of the

economy that go on strike for the renewal of their collective contract. Industry-wide strikes have the characteristics of general strikes: infrequent but very large.Plant-level bargaining is very decentralized; it is related to high strike frequenciesand small sizes, as thousands of firms independently renew their contracts.At thislevel, the probability of a strike is high, but the number of strikers in eachindividual strike is low.

I have shown elsewhere that Cleggs hypotheses hold true for the Italian case:the number of workers on strike

goes upat times of collective contract renewals

while the number of strikes is down and vice versa during periods of plant-levelbargaining.

Furthermore, the bargaining structure, with its even temporal rhythm ofcollective bargaining, introduces a cyclical and periodic component in the move-ment of Italian strikes. But if the structure of collective bargaining introducesdistinct and periodic temporal patterns in the movement of strikes, a business

cycle model of strikes, such as the one tested in the previous section, is likely tobe

grossly misspecified. The business cycle,in

fact, isa

typical nonperiodic cyclewith the cycles of boom and bust unevenly and unequally spaced apart. Thebusiness cycle by itself, in other words, is not sufficient to account fully for the

temporal dynamic of Italian strikes.

Figure 2 shows a plot of the residuals from Equation 1.1of Table 1 and thestandard error band. Below the lower standard error line I marked the dates of



9/29

460

Figure 2 Plot of the residuals from equation 1 of Table 1

metalworkers collective contract renewals.Above, I marked the dates of highestplant-level strike frequency in the metalworking sector. I focused on the metal-

working sector 1) to provide specific dates of reference and blurring effects dueto aggregation problems, although, by and large, most major contracts arerenewed at the same time; and 2) because the metalworking industry plant-levelstrikes make up 40-60 percent of all manufacturing industry plant-level strikes.The residuals of the estimate oftheAshenfelter-Johnson model are characterized

by a clear pattern, with low values around contract renewals and high values inbetween.

Thus strike frequency models based solely on economic variables altogethermiss an important temporal component of strike activity related to collective

bargaining. From a statistical viewpoint, the fact that the residuals show predict-able and unexplained patterns implies that the model is misspecified: somerelevant variable that would account for the residual pattern has been excluded

from the model. The coefficient estimates of Equation 1.1 of Table 1 are thusbiased and the estimates of their variances are likely to be inflated. 21 Theconclusions reached in the previous section supporting an economic model ofstrikes may simply be due to specification errors. In order to feel confident aboutour estimates and the conclusions reached we thus need to respecify and rees-timate the basic economic model for the Italian case with the addition of variables



10/29

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that could account for the periodic movements of strikes induced by bargainingarrangements.

From the above considerations, in a strike frequency model, we could use asa bargaining variable the number of firms under plant-level contract renewal in

any given quarter. In a strike size model, we could use the percentage of workers

subject to collective contract renewal. Unfortunately, the number of firms subjectto plant-level bargaining is unknown, except for limited time periods or ter-ritories. 22 The number of workers subject to collective industry-wide contracts iseasier to obtain, as both employment data and contract expiration and renewaldates by sector are available. Thus we could use this variable even in a strike

frequency model to capture the periodic nature of collective bargaining, althoughits expected sign will be negative rather than positive.

Equation 1.2 of Table 1 shows how strong the effect of such a bargainingvariable is. The estimated coefficient of the bargaining variable is three to fourtimes its standard error. This result, though, does not come at the expense ofeconomic variables, which are still significant and with the expected sign. To

conclude, then, while the business cycle explains the nonperiodic cyclical be-havior of strikes in postwar Italy, the bargaining structure explains their periodic(every three years) cyclical behavior. This is consistent with statistical findingsof my past work.23 Using spectral analysis and other time series methodologies,I had previously shown that Italian strike indicators are characterized by both

periodic and nonperiodic cyclical behavior at the high-, medium-, and low-fre-

quency bands. The econometric results presented here provide a causal explana-tion for each of the temporal components unveiled by exploratory data analysis.Indeed, the business cycle explains the nonperiodic medium-term fluctuations instrike activity, while the bargaining structure explains the periodic (every three

years) cyclical behavior of strikes. The bargaining structure further explains the

out-of-phase patternof

interrelationships amongstrike indicators, with the num-

ber of strikers peaking in correspondence to the timing of industry-wide national

bargaining, and number of strikes peaking approximately a year later in cor-

respondence with subsequent plant-level local bargaining.In conclusion, the interplay between collective contract renewals and the

business cycle goes a long way in explaining the empirically observable patternsin strike shapes. The two major upsurges in the levels of strike activity (1962 and

1969) occurred at the conjuncture of favorable labor market conditions andrenewals of

majorcollective contracts

(in particular, metalworkers,chemicals,

and textiles).

POLITICAL EXCHANGE THEORIES

The pieces of the puzzle now seem to be all in place... except for 1976, a yearof collective contract renewal.According to the bargaining structure argument,



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462

we would have expected the 1976 shape to be different from the shapes of

surrounding years. That, in fact, had been the case for all other years of majorcollective contract renewals:1959,1962,1966,1969, and 1973. Why is the shapeof strikes in 1976

indistinguishablefrom that of 1975 and 1977? Furthermore,

why did the characteristically tall and slim shapes of 1975, 1976, and 1977 carryover to 1978? Strikes during the 1975-1978 period were shorter on the averageand less frequent, but also much larger than ever before. They were typicaldemonstrative strikes, as Shorter and Tilly define them: lightning displays of

union strength, acted out to offer or to withdraw working class support for themesdebated in the political arena.24 Thus after several uninterrupted years of per-manent microconflict at the plant and shop level in the early 1970s, conflict, atthe close of the

decade,took on the demonstrative characteristics of centralized

general strikes under union control, aimed at bringing the weight of massmobilization to bear upon the political system.

Table 2 clearly bears out the demonstrative characteristics of Italian strikes

during this period. Thepolitical strikes of the period were much less frequent thaneconomic strikes, but on the average they involved 100,000-200,000 workers

(when compared to an average size of 2000-5000 workers for economic strikes).Economic strikes were also two to four times as long as political strikes.

What strike theories can account for these data? Thepolitical

nature of strikes

during the 1975-1978 period suggests a political theory. Hibbs has argued that

working-class participation in the management and control of the distribution ofresources shifts the locus of industrial conflict from the labor market and the

private sector, where strike activity is the typical means of pressure, to the publicone, where bargaining and political exchange prevail. Comparative researchhas shown that strike activity has declined whenever and whereverlabor-oriented

Table 2

Shapes of economic and Political Strikes (Manufacturing Industry, 1975-1979)

Frequency = number of strikes per 1000 workersSize = number of strikers per strike

Duration = number of hours lost per striker



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social democratic parties have acquired stable and durable government respon-sibilities, such as in Scandinavian social democracies. Direct access to politicalpower has provided labor with alternative, less costly means to its ends, such as

welfare policies.In Italy, working-class parties, the Italian Communist party (PCI) in par-

ticular, never acquired a stable and durable control over the government. None-

theless, the period under consideration was characterized by changes for the PCIthat ultimately led to the characteristic strike shapes of that period. Letme recountthose changes.

In 1973 Enrico Berlinguer, secretary general of the PCI, in the aftermath of

the Chilean coup detat, formally launched the historic compromise strategy. 28The strategy advocated the renunciation of some of the most radical tenets of the

partys Marxist roots, such as the violent overthrow of the state; respect of the

principle ofpolitical alternance and willingness to step down from office accord-

ing to the rules of electoral politics; defense of private property; the respect ofinternational political equilibria; and willingness to keep Italy in the NATOalliance. The historic compromise strategy further called for broad PCI politicalalliances (particularly with the Christian Democrats) in the formation of govern-ment coalitions, rather than for a left alternative.

In 1976 the PCI externally supported a Christian Democrat, single-party,minority government.Although formally not in the government, it was the firsttime since the 1947 Popular Front government that the PCI was not at the

opposition. The PCI also was given honorary positions, such as some chairs of

parliamentary committees and the presidency of the Chamber. These were thefirst PCI parliamentary offices since 1947. Finally, in 1978, the Communist partyentered into a short-lived Government of National Solidarity together with

Christian Democrats, Socialists, Social Democrats and Republicans. The PCI

retained committee chairs and the presidency of the Chamber.29These developments in the political position oflabor had deep effects on labor

relations and strike activity. In 1975, Confindustria, the main private employersassociation, and the three main labor confederations, CGIL, CISL, and UIL,

signed a major agreement on automatic wage indexing (scala mobile) with 100

percent protection of wages against inflation, particularly at the lower end of payscales. The agreement was an exchange between guaranteed real wages andindustrial peace. Indeed, after 1975, unions started practicing policies of self-

restraint. 30 In 1978, in theEUR document, CGIL, CISL, and UIL fully elaboratedthis policy of moderation in a strategy of restraint &dquo;in exchange for control overinvestments and for participation in economic policy formation.&dquo;31 These changesparallel contemporaneous neocorporatist developments in other countries. But in

Italy it was the historic compromise and the governments of National Solidaritythat brought about the changes.32



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464

The close ties of the Communist party with one of the major unions (CGIL)and the latters control over the network of shop stewards (delegati) constitutedthe basic mechanism for conflict management. With a pro-labor party (PCI) in

the government, conflict decreased; political bargaining increased. In 1978 thenumber of hours lost per worker (8.1) reached a postwar low, general strikes

making up one-third of the total. 33In conclusion, the changes in the level and forms of industrial conflict during

the 1975-1978 period reflect underlying changes in class alliances occurring inthe political arena.As Pizzomo writes: &dquo;in a situation of pure collective bargain-ing, industrial action means threat to withdraw continuity of work. The exchangebecomes political when the threat is withdrawal of the wider social consensus or

social order.&dquo;34 Under political exchange, the threat of collective action becomescredible and serious only when the group can mobilize sufficiently large masses.35The shift toward larger strike sizes in the 1975-1978 period reflects underlyingshifts in the locus and forms of exchange (political versus labor markets).

THEORIES OF STRIKES: FURTHER REFLECTIONS

The various theories of strikes considered in the previous sections have

successfully accounted for the characteristics of strike shapes highlighted in the

introduction. I will remind the reader ofwhat these characteristics are: 1) the shapeof the 1962 and 1966 boxes were larger and flatter than in any other year; 2) the

volume of the boxes was lower during the 1950s than the 1970s; 3) the overallsize of the boxes was higher in 1959,1962, 1966,1969, and 1973 with respect tothe volume of surrounding years; 4) the overall shape of the boxes during the1975-1978 period was significantly different from those of other years; and 5)the 1969 box was bulkier than any of the other 24 boxes.

It would thusappear

that the 25 characters of

Figure1 in search of a

theoryhave found it-the drama is over and the curtain falls. Except for one thing: the

drama, the inner passion that so fiercely seemed to urge those characters on, is

missing. The strikers clashes with the police, the price many workers paid fortheir militancy (such as layoffs, as we shall see), the passions and exhilaration ofcollective action, the red banners, the marches, the impassioned speeches, the

hopes, the disappointments, the conquests of the millions of workers, are lost in

the strike shapes of Figure 1. These things, perhaps, are better left to Pirandellos

literary masterythan confined to scientific

journals.The lack of drama does

pointto a major shortcoming of the explanations I provided in the previous sections,however. By not entirely playing out thedrama thatwas in them, the 25 charactersof Figure 1 have somewhat misled us. More specifically, the strike shapes of

Figure 1 and the econometric results of Table 1 have told us nothing about the

characteristics of the actors involved in those strikes (skilled, unskilled, young,old, working class, or peasant). They have told usnothing about the characteristics



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465

of conflict itself-the tactics used, the collective demands put forward, the

employer and state responses. This lack of knowledge has particularly distortedour interpretation of 1969. The 1969 strike shape does stand out in Figure 1 as

uncharacteristically bulkier than any other shape. What the picture does not tellus, however, is how historically unique, how exceptional, in a countrys labor

history that shape is. To the question &dquo;What caused the 1969 strike shape?&dquo; I haveanswered a tight labor market and the concomitant renewal of several majorcollective contracts. However, if these conditions generated the 1969 shape, then

why did the same shape not occur at other similar conjunctures? It was not the

only year in the postwar period characterized by a round of major collectivecontract renewals or by market conditions favorable to labor.

There is more to the 1969 strike shape than our theories have explained. Theplay is not over and the curtain is thrown back up. The characters have failed toreveal their full drama, but the author(s) themselves may have fallen short. The

strike shapes ofFigure 1 may not have told (and perhaps could not tell) the whole

story. But the theories themselves have inadequacies of their own. In particular:

1. The strike theories considered all treat conflict as a dependent variable.Whether determined by changes in the state of the economy, in the bargainingstructure, or in the political position of labor, the levels and forms of conflict

change in response to independent changes in any of these factors. Is this acorrect assumption? Or does conflict itself help explain these factors? Ourstrike theories have a rather static and ahistorical dimension.

2.As theories of bargaining and exchange, our strike theories presuppose at leastthe presence of another party to bargain with. Even institutionalizationtheories presuppose two groups: one that is institutionalized within the

existing societal power structure and one that accepts the new group withinthat structure. Yet strike theories focus almost exclusively on one of the actorsinvolved (workers), with little consideration paid to the other actors (namely,

employers and the state).

3. It is ironic that our strike theories, which are theories of conflict, rest on

assumptions that social relations are fundamentally harmonious. The basis ofthese theories is equilibrium and consensus rather than conflict itself. Equi-librium and consensus are the typical societal state. However, could conflict

between workers and employers be endemic in capitalist societies? Couldconflict be the natural state and

harmony, equilibrium,and consensus be the

abnormal state for these societies?

4. Our strike theories are only partial theories, each accounting foronly a specific

aspect of strike activity. We had to invoke at least three different theories to

put the puzzle of Figure 1 together. Is there any theory that can subsume these



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466

partial explanations and provide a unifying framework of interpretation forthe available data?

What we need, then, is a theory of conflict that fully takes into account the

causal dynamic and historical interplay between conflict and other variables (forexample, the business cycle and institutional and political arrangements). Weneed a theory that can account for the dialectic of actions and reactions of themain actors (namely, workers, employers, and the state). Finally, we need abroader theory that can explain the multiple facets of industrial conflict. Paradoxi-

cally, the one social theory (the Marxist theory) that has many of these requisiteshas almost been ignored in strike research. I will consider next how a Marxist

theory could help explain Italian strikes.

Some More on the Drama: 1969

Strike scholars have reserved special names for the most momentous expres-sions of working class protest and mobilization to set them clearly apart from theroutine conflict that arises out of everyday labor relations. Hobsbawm calls themstrike explosions.36 Shorter and Tilly prefer the term strike waves?7 Italianscholars use the term cycles of struggle. 38 &dquo;The characteristic thingabout... [strike] explosions,&dquo; writes Hobsbawm, &dquo;is that they mark qualitative as

well as quantitative changes. They are, in fact, generally expansions of themovement into new industries, new regions, new classes of the population.&dquo;39The sheer increase in the magnitude of conflict in 1969 is well illustrated not onlyby the strike shapes of Figure 1, but also by the time plots of Figure 3. 40

The process of workers mobilization in the period 1968-1972 expanded,from the metalworkersand the chemical workers to traditionally quiescent sectors

(such as textiles), even reaching government employees and civil servants; fromthe more industrializedand urbanized areas of northern Italy to the center and the

south; from the large to the small plants. Even white-collar workers, particularlyin large plants, expressed unprecedented levels of militancy.41 Strike tacticsbecame more radical and innovative. They were mainly plantbased and organizedby informal leaders, outside the official union control and the institutionalizedrules ofthe game.42 Demands, as well, radicalized. Issues of industrial democracy,of workers control over the organization of production, and of safety and healthhazard became quite common. Workers transformed and radicalized even tradi-tional wage demands as they pressed egalitarian demands of wage increases equalfor all. 43

Now, can the concurrence of favorable labor market conditions and renewal

of major collective contracts suffice to explain changes in working class militancythat go well beyond a mere increase in the levels of conflict? Perrot writes: &dquo;the

business cycle is the cause of the main fluctuations, indeed of the very nature of

strikes themselves; by itself, however, it cannot explain the depth of certain



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467

retreats, the amplitude of certain offensives. Political circumstances weigh heav-

ily here and provide the key to the understanding of the major thrusts.&dquo;44 Shorterand Tilly make a similar claim when they write:

the timing of strike waves depends largely on the timing of political crisis.... We do notintend to say [they qualify] that political crises cause strike waves to happen; instead, itseems more sensible to claim that politics constitute an important kind of precondition forthe eruption of large-scale workers movement...we are pointing to a sense of politicalcrisis as a prime factor in bringing a large number of men together for collective action.45

A political interpretation of the events of the 1969 hot autumn could accountfor the unusual character of much strike activity during that year and subsequentyears. Itwould also bring our play to a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately, thereare two problems with a political explanation of strike waves. First, as we have

seen, for the Italian case political crisis and change seem to follow rather than

precede strike waves. Second, if strike waves are mainly related to national,central-state politics, how do we account for the fact that many strike waves seem

to occur approximately at the same time in different countries?In rejecting a political explanation of strike waves, however, are we left with

the business cycle explanation?A business cycle interpretation of strike waves is

particularly appealing : 47 it seems to square with the evidence ofprevious sectionsand with my interpretation of the shape of strikes in 1969. It also seems to accountfor broader aspects of working-class mobilization processes. Business cycleeffects are generally significant in statistical models of both unionization, andstrikes and surges in union membership go hand in hand with the surges of conflict

typical of strike waves.As Goetz-Girey writes:

The fundamental movements that cause strikes are often the same as those that cause union

growth. When we observe a correlation between union growth and strike activity, that doesnot

necessarilymean that union

growthis at the root of increases in strike

activity.Rather,

the same causes, in particular, industrialization and economic cycles, affect both union

growth and strike activity. 48

However, there are problems even with a business cycle interpretation ofstrike waves. One problem is that there were seven complete business cycles in

Italy between May 1945 and December 1977. 49 Yet there was only one majorstrike wave during the same period: in 1969.A second problem is the business

cycle itself can be viewed as a product of class conflict, as the by-product of

employers and state actions aimed at curbing labor militancy by thwartingworkers bargaining power in the labor market. Italian unions, as we have seen,have argued that the short and abrupt 1964 recession was deliberately broughtabout by the monetary policies of the Bank of Italy in order to curb the heightenedlevels of labor militancy during the previous rounds of contract renewals. Thebusiness cycle, in other words, may not be an independent variable, the invisible



17/29

468

Figure 3Annual plots of strike indicators (For data sources, seeAppendix.)



18/29

469

hand that both workers and employers have to deal with, each taking advantageof ones favorable position at different times.A recent Marxist explanation of strike waves may overcome some of these

problems. Mandel has argued that major waves of class struggle and long wavesof economic growth go together. He relates strike waves to long economiccycles, rather than to the short or medium cycles upon which business cycletheories focus.52 Screpanti provides some evidence on the precise nature of this

relationship. On the basis of a comparative analysis of strike data, Screpanticoncludes: &dquo;major upheavals tend to explode around the upper turning points of

the long cycles&dquo;53 at 50-year intervals, with minor strike waves appearing hereand there in between.54

Mandel specifies the causal mechanisms that relate strike waves and longeconomic cycles.According to Mandel, at the peak of a long phase of prosperity,favorable labor market conditions lead to large-scale eruptions of industrialconflict. The heightened levels of class confrontation push employers to seekradical technological innovations and structural changes in the organization of

production, which ultimately displace the actors involved in the struggles of the

period of prosperity from their key role in the production process. The economythen enters into a new phase characterized by a new &dquo;specific technology,

radically different from the previous one... [and] centered around a specific typeof machine system... [which], in turn, presupposes a specific form of organizationof the labor process.&dquo;55 In each phase, a specific type of worker occupies a centralposition in the production process. It is this worker who becomes most involved

in the strike activity as each phase reaches maturity.A mode ofproduction explanation of strike waves is particularly appealing

for several reasons. First, the theory can account for the approximate concurrenceof strike waves across different countries in the west (1880s, 1920s, 1960s). It

helps to pin down the bearers of conflict during a strike wave (that is, thoseworkers who are most central to the predominant form of organization of

production). It helps to have an answer to the question of why a strike wave in1969: because it is in the 1960s that came to a peak the long postwar economic

growth of capitalist economies (in the 1970s, all major economic indicators-

GNP, employment, investment-started to decline). In the 1960s, strike trends all

across the Western world reversed Ross and Hartmans prediction of &dquo;the wither-

ing away of strikes.&dquo;56 Finally, it puts the question of conflict into a clear historicaland dialectic perspective. Next I explore these issues further.

The Other WayAround: Conflict as an Independent Variable

Class conflict occupies a central role in the Marxist analytical framework.Class conflict is the motor of history. The class struggle perpetually transformsthe class structure. The class structure, in turn, sets limits on the forms of class



19/29

470

consciousness and class conflict. Strike waves are particularly heightenedmoments of class struggle.As Przeworski writes:

1) Classes are formed as an effect of struggles; 2) the process of class formation is a

perpetual one: classes are continually organized, disorganized and reorganized; 3) classformation is an effect of the totality of struggles in which multiple historical actors attemptto organize the same people. 59

In Italy, the skilled workers involved in the struggles of the late 1940s and in the

early phases of the 1959-1963 cycle of struggle were replaced by a new historicactor in the struggles of the late 1960s and 1970s: the mass-worker, generally anunskilled young male from the south, working on the assembly lines of northernfactories.After the successful 1969 strike wave, this actor informed with his

Weltanschauung the whole Italian labor movement for the next decade. But the

grand vision of achieving deep social transformations (the so-called riforme or

reforms) through a process of large-scale demands pressed on the state with the

backing of working-class mass action failed.As Accomero and Rieser argue, thisvision failed partly because of the limitations intrinsic in a strategic plan customtailored to a specific working-class actor: the mass-worker. Throughout the

decade, this actor had been losing centrality in the working class, as technologicaltransformations were rapidly reshaping the class composition of labor. 61 WhenItalian unions realized this by the close of the decade, it was too late to avoiddefeat.

The 1959-1963 and 1968-1972 cycles of struggle fundamentally altered

working class capacities and the distribution ofpower between classes, ultimatelyresulting in new forms of institutionalization of the Italian working class in boththe legal and political spheres. Both cycles of struggle spurred changes in

membership and other organizational assets of working class institutions.Even a cursory look at

plotsA and B of Figure 4 of union membership for the

two major Italian labor organizations, CGIL and CISL, shows how deeplymembership was affected by the 1959-1963 and 1968-1972 cycles of struggle.62The similarity in the movement of number of strikers and union membership-CGIL in particular-is remarkable. So remarkable indeed-and not only for theItalian case-that the same variables used in strike models are used in union

growth models; the only difference being that in the former model a strikeindicator is the dependent variable while unionization appears among the inde-

pendent variables;the

oppositeis true for union

growthmodel 63

Membership, though, is just one aspect of a labor organization. Della Roccahas shown how not just membership, but the union organizational structure itself,

changed as a consequence of the two major postwar outbursts of industrialconflict. 64 The first big change occurred in the early 1960s, in connection withthe 1962 strikes for the renewal of the metalworkers collective agreement,

although &dquo;some time after the opening of the struggle.&dquo;65 The establishment of a



20/29

471

Figure 4Annual plots of union and party membership (For data sources, seeAppendix.)



21/29

472

due checkoff by employers, which stabilized union membership and revenues,set off both quantitative and qualitative changes in union organization. Thebureaucratic apparatus grew in size. This in turn brought into the union a new

group of officials with quite different backgrounds from their predecessors andolder colleagues. Until the early 1960s, union officials had come at first from the

political and labor union apparatus of the prefascist era, and later from the scoresof mainly skilled workers who, in the repressive climate of the 1950s, had losttheir jobs because of their political beliefs and activities. Starting after the1959-1963 cycle and accelerating after the 1969 hot autumn, a new generationofcadres entered the unions. The newcomers were generally semiskilled, assemb-

ly-line workers without professional qualifications and without previous political

apprenticeship in the party. The change was particularly dramatic after 1969. Ina brief span of time, approximately one-third of the whole apparatus was replacedthrough the cooperation of those workers who had actively participated in the

struggles, usually with informal leadership roles 66These qualitative and quantitative changes in the economic organizations of

the working class (unions) were paralleled by similar changes in its politicalorganizations (PCI, in particular). The 1968-1972 strike cycle overturned long-term declines in the strength of the Communist party, as measured by both party

membership and votes. Starting in 1969, after the postwar low of 1968 (see plotC in Figure 4), PCI membership started to rise steadily, resulting in a substantialturnover of the members of the apparatus and intermediate cadres in the yearsbetween 1974 and 1976. 67

By affecting changes in class capacities, strike waves ultimately affect thedistribution of power among classes, often bringing about, if successful, majorshifts in the political position of labor in the power structure. In 1962, after a

couple of years of unprecedented levels of conflict, the Socialists were brought

into a government coalition, for the first time after the Popular Front governmentof 1947. 68 In the 1970s, PCI membership growth went hand in hand with majorPCI electoral victories: at the 1974 divorce referendum, at the 1975 administrative

elections, and at the 1976 national elections, when PCI jumped to 34.4 percent ofthe votes, up from 27.2 percent of 1972, its highest share in the postwar period.These electoral victories created &dquo;a diffused climate of great expectations.&dquo;69 Theincreased political weight of the PCI eventually led to the entrance of theCommunist party into a government coalition of national solidarity whose effect

on the levels and forms of industrial conflict I have already discussed.Strike waves, then, in addition to causing deep changes in the bargaining and

organizational structures, are also motors of political change. When successful,strike waves entail redistribution of political power in favor of the working class;when unsuccessful, they are met with repression. The failure of the factoryoccupation movement in 1920 brought the Fascists to power just a couple ofyears



22/29

473

later. The failure ofthe 1943-1947 cycleofstruggle was followed by several yearsof severe state and employers repression. Behind political change there is

conflict, but again the causal relationship is not unidirectional. Changes in the

political position of labor in the power structure bring about in their turn changesin the level, type, and locus of conflict. The parameters of conflict are forever

changing, constantly being subverted by conflict itself; not by our run-of-the-mill

strike, to be sure, but by strike waves, these massive workers insurgencies &dquo;whichmarch as exclamation marks in labor history.&dquo; Strike waves are motors ofsociopolitical change; each new wave brings out new forms of institutionalizationof labor and new forms of accommodations among the main actors involved:

workers, employers, and the state.

It Takes Two to Tango and at Least Two to Fight: Workers, Employersand the State

Strike waves and cycles bring about changes in the forms of institutionaliza-tion of conflict (bargaining structure), in class capacities (in terms of union andlabor party membership and other organizational assets), and in the overalldistribution of power in capitalist societies. It would be impossible to understandsuch momentous mobilization processes, which oppose one class to another,

without understanding what employers and the state do. Unfortunately, strikeresearch has focused exclusively on the actions of workers, disregarding those of

employers and the state. Strikes emerged in the nineteenth century in mostwestern countries as the predominant expression of grievances of a class gener-ated by industrial capitalism. 72 They emerged as part of a whole new repertoireof collective actions linked to the factory system and to mass politics (strikes,demonstrations, electoral rallies, and so on) and in substitution of traditional,

century-old forms of protest. It was the incessant interaction among the mainactors involved- workers, employers, and the state-and in particular the activeintervention of the state on the employers side-that ultimately provided the rulesand definitions ofthe acceptable forms ofprotest. It is not possible to understandwhat workers do without at the same time understanding what employers and thestate do.A better understanding of the nature of employers and state actions andtheir relationship with strike waves and cyclesmay start to provide deeper insightsinto the unfolding of industrial conflict in capitalist societies and its underlyingcauses. In this section, I will

explorethe role of state and

employersactions in

industrial conflict.

Italian employers have resorted to both short-term and medium- to long-termstrategies in response to strike waves. Layoffs and transfers from one plant toanother within the same firm are among the firstemployers reactions. The graphsC-E of Figure 5 show how Italian employers heightened such measures duringor right after a strike wave. The avant-garde among the workers are the particular



23/29

474

targets of employers reaction.As graphA of Figure 5 shows the members ofCommissioniInterne-plant-based workers representative bodies-have alwaysbeen in the bulls-eye. Graph B, however, shows how workers ability to resist

employers countermobilization is greatly enhanced when the result of strikewaves is not simply monetary but is transformed in legislative success such as theWorkers Charter.

A second immediate response typical of periods of high social tension is thatof flight of capital abroad and of lower levels of investment. 75 There are severalcauses for capital flight from one country to another: fiscal reasons due to the

capitalists search for tax havens, short-term speculation, due to the difference

between internal and external interest rates or between immediate or delayed

exchange of one currency with respect to a foreign currency, and long-termspeculation related to portfolio and direct investments abroad of multinationalfirms. Expectationsof economic and political crisis are often listed by economists

among the causes of capital flights; unfortunately, though, &dquo;economic theory isnot well equipped to deal with these issues&dquo; and the argument is droppedaltogether. However, it is striking that the timing of the two major waves ofillegal export of capital abroad from Italy coincided with the timing of the two

major waves of industrial conflict in postwar Italy and with the related politicalevents (for example, the formation of a center-left government in 1962).AsVicarelli, an economist from the Bank of Italy, wrote:

The Italian experience of the last decade witnesses the extraordinary growth of a particulartype of outflow of capital: the illegal export of bills. In the 1960-69 period, out of a total

gross outflow of 19,000 million dollars, 44% has taken the form of export of bills. This

figure only provides an idea of the average dimension of the phenomenon that in certain

periods, particularly in 1962-64 and in 1968-69, achieved particularly high peaks.

As we have seen, the

earlyand late 1960s

correspondto the two

major cyclesof struggles of the postwar period.In the medium to long term, employers attempt to regain the lost margins of

power substitutingmachines to workers. The capital-to-laborratio (K/L) of Figure6 suggests how conflict may provide a strong incentive to capitalists to substitute

the factors of production. Indeed, the slope of the line K/L increases at times of

major upsurges in strike activity.In the early 1970s, after the 1968-1972 strike wave and at a time when the

1970 Workers Charterprovided

the unions withgreater

control over traditional

employers and managers prerogatives, such as workers layoffs and transfers or

reorganization of production, Italian employers chose yet another route in their

attempt to undermine the economic basis of workers power. This consisted

mainly of subcontracting, decentralization of production, and, more generally,expansion of the size of the secondary labor market which does not enjoy the



24/29

475

x~8

Id3

830rA

S

&dquo;0

w4

ou..G)

InOl)cU

0&dquo;j00.N11)

>1

0

a,T)aM

[H



25/29

476

Figure 6 Capital-to-labor ratio (K/L) (For data sources, seeAppendix.)

guarantees of the Workers Charter. The estimated contribution to the national

product of the underground economy skyrocketed in the early to middle 1970s,to the point that the Italian Central Statistical Office had to reestimate the officialGNP figures for the 1970s. During the 1970s there has also been a tremendous

expansion of smaller firms employing less than 20 workers-for which theWorkers Charter does not apply-and stagnation in the size of larger firms, asconfirmed by Census data. 78 Undoubtedly, factors not directly related to classrelations have affected this

general process, labeledin

Italyas

decentramentoproduttivo?9 However, as the Italian labor economist Contini writes:

It seems to be an undisputable fact that in Italy one of the determining elements of plantsize is workers capacity to control the organization of the labor process. The causalmodelis high workers control over the organization of production-small plant size-de-centralization of production.

Employers responses considered thus far are all individual responses. How-

ever, employers resorted to collective responses as well through their class

organizations. In 1970, leadership in Confindustria-the private employersassociation-passed from the hands of an old-fashioned, backward-looking and

sternly antilabor capitalist faction of small-scale employers, operating in a com-

petitive domestic market, into the hands of the leaders of the multinational

oligopolies which had grown during the postwar period (FIAT, Pirelli, Olivetti).



26/29


27/29

478

it has come to empirical testing. Yet altogether leaving repression out of thepicturemay be quite misleading. For instance, failure to recognize the high levels of

repression in the early 1950s across the western world has led some authors to

attribute the low levels of conflict to the time of some inherent property ofadvanced capitalism and to predict the &dquo;end of ideology&dquo; and the &dquo;witheringaway&dquo; of strikes. 90 These theories have not fared well, given the general rise inconflict levels in the whole western world during the 1960s.A more realistic

explanation of the low levels of strike activity in the early 1950s would have totake into account the high levels of both state and employers repression duringthe Cold War years.

SUMMARYAND CONCLUSIONS

My goal in this paperwas to pin down the determinants of the temporal patternof strikes in postwar Italy and to provide a theoretical explanation by pitchingseveral strike theories one against the other. I reviewed several theories of strikesand pointed out what each theory had to contribute to our understanding of Italian

postwar strikes. I also discussed the limitations of each theory.More specifically, I showed that the business cycle accounts for much of the

temporalvariation of strikes. However, economic factors alone cannot

fullyexplain postwar Italian strikes. The nonperiodic nature of the business cyclecannot account for a periodic component (peaks every three years) empiricallyobservable in the data. It is the bargaining structure, with its two-tiered bargaining,at the national, industry-wide level, and at the local, plant level, that accounts forthis temporal component. Furthermore, I showed that some significant changesin the shape of strikes can only be understood in relation to underlying politicalprocesses (PCI historic compromise and governments of national solidarity).

Thus the institutionalization of class conflict within the confines of an

industrial relations system plays a key role in shaping the forms, the timing, andthe very nature of industrial conflict. Parallel institutional arrangements in the

political sphere tend to bring the working class within the structure of the

bourgeois state and electoral politics. The forms that these political arrangementsbetween classes take deeply affect the forms, levels, and nature of conflict, evenwhen controlling for the effect of other factors.

Looking beyond the immediate direct effects of economic and institutional

factors (bothin

the labor marketand in

the political arena),I

argued thatthese

factors are themselves the outcome of class struggle. They vary overtime as class

capacities and the relative power of classes change as a result of conflict. I showedthat institutionalization in both the legal and political spheres was substantiallyaltered in the wake of the two major strike upsurges in postwar Italian labor

history. Class conflict, in the form of strike waves, thus emerges from the analysispresented in this paper as a motor of sociopolitical change. Industrial conflict



28/29

479

reflects a dialectic process. The interplay of the determinants of conflict is

constantly changing; the relative weight of these determinants is constantlychanging. It is conflict itself that shapes and reshapes the factors at play at any

given historical conjuncture.When looked at from a class perspective, strike waves show their deep

political nature. During strike waves, the stakes of the labor relations game,normally confined to aggressive economism, suddenly increase. They go to the

very heart of capitalist social relations of production. Issues of control, authority,and power within and outside capitalist enterprises become the focus of workers

struggles, of everyday talk. To the extent that during strike waves, the workingclass mounts its most serious challenge to the structure of authority of capitalist

social relations, the meaning of strike waves is deeply political. The outcome toois often political. &dquo;The great wave-year mobilizations,&dquo; Shorter and Tilly observe,&dquo;were invariably rewarded with some kind of legislative success, the ultimatetouchstone of the value of political action.&dquo;91 The hot autumn upsurge of 1969,besides bringing the highest wage increase after the war, resulted in the law of

May 1970 known as the Workers Charter, which extended individual and tradeunion rights. In this sense, Perrot and Shorter and Tilly are right in pointing to

politics as a major characteristic of strike waves. They are wrong, however, in

pointing to politics as a general cause of strike waves. Strike waves, as majorexpressions of class struggle, find their roots in capitalist social relations of

production. It is changes in this sphere that bring about changes in the levels andform of class struggle.

Given the importance of these vast mobilization processes and the generallack of agreement on their causes, further investigation is necessary.As the

parameters of conflict change over time, there is a need to specify how theycombine to affect conflict at any given historical juncture, the conditions under

which certain factors prevail as determinants of industrial conflict.As theseparameters change as a result of conflict itself, both workers and employersaccommodate to each new &dquo;institutional order,&dquo; strategically trying to achieve abetter bargaining position. There is a need to explore further the dialectic ofactions and reactions among the main actors involved, not just workers and

employers, but also unions and the state.All of this may require abandoningtraditional, government-collected strike data, generally quite poor in informationcontent.92 Only involvement in primary data collection can produce the richer

data necessary to test hitherto untested and untestable hypotheses. 93

APPENDIX: DATAAND METHODOLOGY

The strike data used are quarterly and yearly observations at the manufactur-

ing industry level. Yearly data come from ISTAT (Istituto Centrale di Statistica:Annuario statistico Italiano and Bollettino mensile di statistica).The differences



29/29

480

in beginning and ending dates of the samples used are due to data availability,particularly on unemployment and union density.Although official strike statis-tics are available since 1948, labor force data are available only since 1954 on a

yearly basis and since 1959 on a quarterly basis. Yearly labor force data weretaken from ISTAT (Istituto Centrale di Statistica:Annuario statistico Italiano),while quarterly data were taken from ISTAT (Istituto Centrale di Statistica:Bollettino mensile di statistica).

Unemployment rate in the equations of Table 1 was taken from ISTAT (IstitutoCentrale di Statistica: Bollettino mensile di statistica). The real wage variable was

constructed as the ratio between the index of minimum contractual wages and the

cost of living index both published by ISTAT (Istituto Centrale di Statistica:

Bollettino mensile di statistica). Equation 1.2 of Table 1 also contains a variablegiven by the percentage ofblue-collar workers subject to contract renewal in each

quarter in the Italian manufacturing industry. Since not all subsectors ofmanufac-

turing renew their collective contracts at the same time I have based my calcula-tions on some 40 subsectors. Expiration and renewal dates for each of these 40

were taken from LuigiAlinari94 and from the yearly issues of Relazione sullattivitd confederale (Rome: Confindustria).95 Employment data have been takenfrom the data published in Rassegna di statistiche del lavoro (Confindustria) as

collected by Ministero del Lavoro e Previdenza Sociale. The functional form ofthe relationship between number of strikes and real wages is a 12-quarter movingaverage of previous wage increases, following the specification of theAshenfel-ter-Johnson original model. I used the ShirleyAlmon polynomial distributed lag

technique to estimate the lag structure 96 Furthermore, the equations were es-timated using the Cochrane-Orcutt procedure, because the Durbin-Watson statis-tic indicated problems of first-order serial correlation 97 The estimates wouldotherwise suffer from inefficiency, suboptimality of the forecasts based on the

regression equation, and lack of validity of the usual statistical tests of sig-nificance.

Union data for CISL and CGIL until 1977 come from Romagnoli and Rossi, 98They were updated to 1978 using figures supplied by the unions to the author.The layoff and transfer rate data used in plotsA and B of Figure 4 were taken

fromAnnuario (Confindustria). Data for plots C, D, and E of the same figurecome from Rassegna di statistiche del lavoro (Rome: Ministero del Lavoro). Data

for the K/L (capital to labor ratio) in the manufacturing sectorcomes from Heimler

and Milana.99

NOTES

1. Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of anAuthor, trans. Frederick May(London: Heinemann, 1954), pp. 3-9, passim.

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