Policlinico - an assembly of workers

The collective of workers at the polyclinic in Rome formed in the early 1970s out of the dissatisfaction with the mainstream trade unions.

The collective’s outstanding character was based on the fact that it included medical students, nurses, porters and doctors, and aimed at the socialisation of the divided knowledge within a project of workers’ control of the clinic. Patients were participating in the regular assemblies of the collective.

Workers fought for equal conditions between permanent and precarious staff, they imposed free health services for local workers against the private interests of the bosses of the clinic. The collective supported the occupation of administrative buildings for the establishment of a children’s nursery for hospital workers. They also joined a feminist occupation of an operation theatre for free and safe abortions.

The collective was locally linked to similar collectives within the energy sector, railways and various working class neighbourhoods.

You can read these texts for further background information:

Proletarians and Health (Intro)
Struggles in the 1970s at the polyclinic in Rome
The feminist occupation of the Polyclinic in Rome in 1978