STUDY Trade Unions in Italy MICHAELA NAMUTH January 2013 n Italy’s three largest union federations, CGIL, CISL and UIL, together account for 12.5 million members, but almost half of these are pensioners. The average union density is about 30 percent. The unions are strongest in the service sector, which employs 70 percent of the total workforce. n The conditions under which the unions operate are made more difficult by the tra ­ditionally high proportion of small businesses and the multitude of atypical em­ployment relationships that currently account for up to 80 percent of private-sector hirings. n Collective bargaining takes place at two levels: sector and workplace(and some­times also local industrial district). The trilateral agreement of 2009, which the CGIL refused to sign, permitted workplace and in-house agreements to undercut sectoral collective agreements. n Under Berlusconi the social dialogue between employers’ organisations, unions and the government continued without CGIL. After Monti’s election as prime minister, CGIL leader Susanna Camusso returned to the talks on pension and labour market reform. But when the government announced a new round of cuts in July 2012 all three federations threatened a general strike. n The trade unions profit from Italians’ continuing disenchantment with politics. As a measure of their acceptance in society, the trust in the unions has reached the record level of 34 percent. International Trade Union Policy