Statement by Alessandra Tolentino, Delegate of CGIL, CISL, UIL trade unions (Italy), Plenary session of the International Labour Conference

Mr. Director General, Chair,
Delegates of workers, employers, and governments,

it is a great honour to speak on behalf of the trade union confederations CGIL, CISL and UIL, bringing the voice of Italian workers. A voice rooted in the dignity of work, social justice, and the daily commitment to a more equitable and sustainable society.

We live in complex times. Economic, technological, and environmental transformations are challenging the resilience of our production models, our communities, our achievements on rights and progress at work.

We cannot talk about rights and progress, however, without talking about peace. War, anywhere in the world, is always a defeat for humanity. It affects the weakest, devastates territories, destroys economies, and generates exploitation. And workers always pay the highest price.

The history of the labour movement is deeply linked to the promotion of peace, but the whole world of work must be a guardian of peace. Peace means not only the absence of war: peace means decent work, social justice, cooperation between countries. Our action as labor actors must counter the logic of conflict and promote diplomacy, international solidarity, equity in the distribution of resources, and self-determination of peoples.

In peacetime, rights can make room for themselves. The right to stable and secure employment, the right to a fair and living wage, the right to health, the right to free expression and association, the right to lifelong learning, the right to childhood and education. All these rights must be conquered, defended, and enforced.

For this reason, here we wish to reiterate the Italian union's support for the resolution on Palestine and for the implementation of Article 33 for Myanmar and Belarus, where human and trade union rights continue to be violated and where decisive action must be taken in defense of the people who live there.

Unregulated globalization, climate and health crises, digitization, and new forms of work have highlighted how fragile the condition of millions of workers, particularly young people, women, and migrants, is.

We therefore support the work carried out by the standard-setting commissions on platforms and biohazards: a coherent and inclusive international regulatory approach is as urgent for the protection of digital platform workers as it is for ensuring occupational health and safety, combating vulnerable conditions, and tackling growing inequalities.

Rights and protections should not be experienced as an obstacle to competitiveness, but as a necessary condition for sustainable and lasting growth. Certain and fair legislation serves not only to protect workers' rights, but also businesses by creating legal certainty and economic and social stability. In this sense, it is essential that a multilevel regulatory approach, combining legislation, collective bargaining, and inclusive social dialogue, is adopted in global supply chains to build responsible, fairer, and more transparent production models. Where social rights are lacking, exploitation, informality, insecurity, precarity and in-work poverty proliferate. Where workers are protected, there is better investment, better work, and better production.

This is evidenced by the realities where collective bargaining and workers’ participation, in workplaces as well as at the institutional level, succeed in building inclusive and sustainable production models. In Italy, as in many countries, concrete experiences show that the active involvement of workers in decision-making processes generates benefits in terms of productivity, safety, innovation, and individual and collective well-being. Bargaining and legislation are not a cost: they are an investment in social and economic stability.

Mr. Director, Dear Colleagues,

The challenge before us is not only to adapt work to change, but to drive change through work. Every human being has the right to safe and decent work. Every worker must be able to feel protected, represented, respected.

Therefore, we need a new social and global alliance, based on a simple but powerful principle: no transition — green, digital, economic — can be just without the full involvement of the world of work and without adequate investment.

To concretely realize this goal, it is necessary for the social partners to exercise their proactive and competent role. In this regard, we would like to reiterate the need to enhance and promote the activity of the International training centre in Turin, which is crucial for shaping and exploring the future frontiers of the world of work.

Peace, collective bargaining, social dialogue, and rights are not words of the past. They are the foundations of a better world. And today more than ever, we must defend them, revive them, and make them the core of international multilateral action.

On behalf of Italian workers, I’d like to strongly affirm our commitment to a strong, autonomous ILO, capable of facing the challenges of the present and building a people-centered future.

Thanks and good work everyone.

• Video recording of the session