CISL

For the past six years, Italian Communism's most trusty and telling weapon has been the CGIL (Confederazione Generate Italiana del Lavoro). From 1944 to 1948 it operated almost as a monopolistic, aggressive state within the state, claiming 6,500,000 members and another 5,000,000 affiliates, using the general strike as a political bludgeon against the government. CGIL's boss was Communist Bigwig Giuseppe di Vittorio, who ran the show with a strong arm and a jealous eye for any non-Communist challenge to his power.

Last week, Comrade di Vittorio and his CGIL faced a rising rival, the CISL--Confederazione Italiana Sindacate Lavoratori (Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions). CISL (pronounced chisel) started growing two years ago as a Christian Democrat splinter of the Communist union, has grown steadily and courageously, chiseled deeply into Red trade union strength. Last month the Communists called a waterfront strike against U.S. arms shipments. CISL unionists, under police guard, broke it by unloading American weapons at Naples.

Contempt & Terror. CISL's leadership has had rough going. When the first Christian Democrat splinter appeared in CGIL, Comrade di Vittorio expelled its leaders with contempt, then applied terror.

In the fall of 1948, not far from the Red center of Bologna, a Christian Democrat labor organizer, Giuseppe Fanin, 26, was found battered and dying on a roadside. He had been hit on the head with an iron bar, kicked in the belly with nailed boots because he had urged farm laborers to secede from the CGIL. In May 1949, Anselmo Martoni, 30, a moderate Socialist, urged the braccianti (landless peasants) of Molinella to defy a Communist strike order. He was waylaid and slugged. Red bullyboys tried vainly to browbeat his mother into signing a paper declaring her son a bastard. A month later in Rome, Martoni made an impassioned speech before fellow Socialists, helped sway them toward secession from the CGIL.

Gradually, with considerable prodding from visiting U.S. labor organizers ("When are you guys gonna get together?") the CGIL secessionists moved toward a new, free federation. Last February in Naples, Christian Democrats, Socialists and Republican trade unionists agreed to merge, chose as secretary general a Christian Democrat veteran: paunchy, plodding Giulio Pastore, 47, who has an unimpeachable record as an antiFascist. Last week in Rome, the new CISL was formally launched.

Courage & Competence. CISL counts 1,600,000 members--as compared with CGIL's 3,500,000. Nor can it yet match the Communist hold on workers in north Italy's heavy industries and in communications. But CISL dominates textile, tobacco and office workers, is gaining among metal workers, leads the CGIL in south Italy. It has won an accolade from ECA Chief James Zellerbach for "courage and competence" and for "strengthening . . . democratic government."

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