EIGHTH REGIONAL CONGRESS

OUTLINE OF DISCUSSION FOR THE DEBATE

Cagliari 23 - 24 May 2001
"Hotel Mediterraneo" - Viale Armando Diaz

CISL Sardinia is a popular trade union, which bases its experience on the values of humanism and solidarity. It is an association which represents workers and the weakest categories of society, which protects the rights of people and families, which activiely participates in the identity of the Sardinian people in their political, institutional, cultural, social and community expression. It works to establish a society based on justice, liberty and equality realizable through participation and subsidiarity.

The "Pact of Sardinian People" is CISL's proposal to build a new region where all the territory has an equal dignity, role and representation, and where all can stay and live (equal conditions for all) with the same opportunities both in the world of work and in the affirmation of the individual.

Sardinia belongs to the Sardinian people and it is an Italian island. It actively and directly participates in the process of social and political cohension of the European Union and in the decisions and choices to promote equal opportunities of development and distribution of wealth in all regions and to eliminate differences of different nature and origin recognizing and appreciating ethnic, historical and cultural diversity.

Development and job creation are the most important objectives for Sardinia. For this to happen greater competitivity on a regional scale is necessary; with an increase in and more balanced distribution of wealth. To this end it is also fundamental: to improve schools, training programmes, the transport system and territorial continuity, techonolgy and the telecommunications system, water supply and its distribution, the production and consumption of energy and the management of and access to credit. The defence of the productive and professional patrimony which exists is the condition necessary for a further increase in collective wealth. The "Institutional Agreement of Development Programmes" between the Regional Junta and the national Government, the new "Plan for Revival", the resources available from the European Union for the period 2000-2006 are all opportunities to grasp and evaluate political social and institutional concensus and unity. In this field, the "Institutional Agreement of Development Programmes" is one of the most important instruments to realize the objectives of employment and development; but it should be checked in the contents already subscribed to and reviewed in the light of territorial, sectoral and regional exigincies.

Sardinia aspires to federalism, to organize itself form within according to its own will and on the basis of specific social, institutional, economic and historical needs. At the same time, it participates in the reform of the shape of the State with its own particular characteristics.

The Statutes of Sardinia and the Constituent Assembly are fundamental in order to recognize, share and carry out the new will of the Sardinian people. Social representation is an integral part of the apparatus which affirms the objective and the implementation of federalism which expresses social solidarity.

Work and development programmes need new laws and reforms adequate to national and international events; to the needs of workers and to the Sardinian community as a whole. It is therefore necessary to put in motion a series of reforms to quickly organize a programme with the aims of:

• Promoting human resources
• Solidarity and social integration
• Programmes to help companies
• Local development projects
• Being protagonists in social partnerships
• Integrating instruments of "agreed programmes"

Knowledge, science and research are priorities for individual growth and for access to the rights of citizenship, but also for competitivity, for work and development, for nutrition and health. Science and research are free and autonomous activities. Sardinia is keenly interested in their development as a land which promotes research, favours and supports science with the aim of sustainable development and the principal of caution in the resolution of topical problems above all in the areas of biotechnology, the environment and climate.

Communication and information represent for Sardinia both an opportunity and an objective. In these areas, the attention and intervention of the Regional government, of the State Government and of the world of business is essential. This regards above all the potentialities of technology applied to communication and information, its relevance in the modernization of Sardinia and in the exercising of the rights of citizens, its influence in the practice of democracy. In this way, and in coherence with the development of identity and of cultural and historical roots, it takes on an important relevance in the support and diffusion of the Sardinian language.

In general terms, also in Sardinia, the borders between social representation of interested groups and mediation and political representation are often weak, sometimes inexistent. This liability, both in the autonomy of the role of trade unions and in political functions, is characteristic of the present phase of transition. Social partnership and economic democracy have often made trade unions "compete" with the party political system. What has to be clarified and underlined is that the complexity of society's problems, of the economy and of institutions, necessitate the concentration and consesus of the social partners to resolve these same problems.

The Regional Government, together with the social partners, needs to introduce effective plans which by concerted action can implement and develop useful health and social welfare programmes. In fact, the well being of people individually and as a society involves the adoption of adequate and inclusive health programmes for all citizens and in particular the old, the disabled and the weakest and most vulnerable categories of so-ciety.

The difficulties of Sardinia on the political, social, cultural and political front, have to be tackled by strengthening dialogue with the Government and the European Union, but also through an internal confrontation among the Sardinian people. It is necessary that in the behaviour of public and private, of collective and individual bodies, there prevails a behaviour based on responsability, effectiveness, efficiency and the rule of law.

CISL adapts its organization to the changes in society, in the world of work, in the economy and in institutions. At the same time it contributes to their development. The political proposal and representation of interested parties directs and determines the internal democratic life, the organization and representative structures, the contents and management of CISL's statute. The Sardinian branch of CISL believes that internal federalism and the assumption of the principals of subsidiarity and solidarity, can represent an area for common discussion for the further continuation of CISL's internal organization reform. Thus we would draw the federation of trade unions' attention to the review and development of the "Solidarity Pact", signed in 1987 by the National Federation Secretary and the Regional Federation Secretary. CISL Sardinia identifies in the integrated activities of services to its members, and in the organization of these services, one of the most important forms of protection and defence of the income and buying power of individual salaires and families. In the organization and representation project of CISL Sardinia the other aspects of primary importance are:

• The confirmation of the number of Territorial Federations (seven), and the relative branches of these federations, as a structure of representation of CISL Sardinia on the island;
• The new representation of interests and the identification of models of organization and statutory bodies for the constantly changing aspect of work;
• Basic training including the present political scene for future senior executives;
• The politics of proselytism;
• The role of basic representation and of common trade union representation programmes;
• The streamlining of the structures and their strengthening in terms of professionalization;
• Leagues and Communal Unions used as instruments of protection of the territory and representation of interested parties.

The Sardinian branch of CISL is convinced that the further strengthening of the organization in the following years should include a greater involvement of young people, of women, of immigrants and of consumers. To this end we propose the strengthening and development of the relative structures and the setting up of the regional branch of ANOLF (CISL's association of immigrants). As far as regards the "Coordination of Female members", in underlining the activities completed in 2000 both on the political and proselyte front, CISL Sardinia believes it is necessary to strengthen and increase its activities in this area. The importance of IAL (CISL's professional training organisation) in professional training programmes, of SICET (CISL's organisation for the protection of tenants and territorial politics), of ETSI (CISL's organisation for the arrangement of free time activities, is also considered essential. As far as concerns CENASCA (CISL's organisation for cooperation support), the congress will provide the opportunity to reflect on the possibility of a relaunching project. For INAS (CISL's institution for social welfare assistance), its centrality and integration in the services system and its new role as a consequence of the imminent reform of social welfare institutions is considered of relevant importance.