"We're not criminals"

Ruben, a SI Cobas union activist, talks about repression against workers and union officials in Piacenza in March 2021.

The attacks follow successful strikes in the logistics industry that resulted in compliance of national sector-level agreements and improvement agreements and in the case of TNT-Fedex even terminations were repelled. Most of the time these struggles are lead to put into practice what's already law, e.g. sector-level wages, subsequently guaranteed working hours, correct payrolls. Before SI Cobas appeared approximately 10 years ago illegal conditions, especially for the majoritarian migrant workers in the Italian logistics sector but also in other sector, were the norm.

In addition to the state's oppression that Ruben describes in this interview, on 23 March 2021 a court sentenced the regional SI Cobas coordinator from Bologna, Simon Carpeggiani, to nine months in prison because he joined a picket in Ferrara in 2014. The picket was repeatedly attacked by fascists and the Lega Nord party at that time.

Watch here another video about the current wave of repression in Italy.