Naples - 'We need to restore to the South its ancient dignity as a subject of thought', Franco Cassano's phrase was the guiding thread of the meeting, organized by Cgil Napoli e Campania and Fondazione Di Vittorio, entitled 'Views from the South', which was held on January 9th in Naples.
The well-attended meeting opened the program of the trade union training plan of the category organization for 2025-2026, with the intent of starting again from the South, or from the Souths, making an analysis of the past looking at future prospects and projects to be implemented to restore to the South the necessary centrality in the economic and development policies of national politics.
Cgil Napoli e Campania and Fondazione Di Vittorio have fielded an exceptional parterre to address the 'new southern question' in a prospective manner. The works were introduced by Clara Lodomini, secretary of Cgil Napoli e Campania, then through a path of historical analysis entrusted to professors Pier Giorgio Ardeni (University of Bologna) and Giuseppe Iglieri (University of Molise) the discussion addressed the analysis of the current situation with the passionate intervention of the professors of the University of Federico II of Naples, Giustina Orientale Caputo and Paola De Vivo.
The General Secretary of Cgil Napoli e Campania, Nicola Ricci, offered a snapshot of the current employment and economic situation in Campania. Luca Bianchi, General Director of Svimez, illustrated – through the analysis of economic data from recent years – the direction to go in order to restore the Mezzogiorno to economic and development centrality in Italy and Europe. The prospects were entrusted to Francesco Sinopoli, President of the Di Vittorio Foundation and the conclusions to Cristian Ferrari, National Cgil Secretary.
The central point of the discussion was the issue of differentiated autonomy, proposed by the Calderoli law, which the Cgil is opposing through the referendum that will be held in the coming months and the real risk that the law will increase - if not stopped - the economic and social gap between North and South.
"This - explained Clara Lodomini, of the CGIL Naples and Campania secretariat - is an initiative that is part of the two-year training plan of the CGIL Campania 25/26, aimed at turning the spotlight on the South. We need not only to analyze the current condition but we want to retrace the history of the political choices that have affected the South, to understand what were the reasons for the failed and delayed development. The goal is to reconnect the present and the past to build the future of our union action".
"We must ask ourselves - continued Clara Lodomini - if it makes sense to continue to look at the Southern question only as a great national question, without addressing the problem that concerns the entire Mediterranean basin and the future of relations with the African continent or without grasping the strategic dimension of cohesion policies at a European level. In this perspective, reflections on the development policies of the South become an ambitious cultural path to question ourselves on where Italy, Europe and the world are going.
If it is true that the South is not an industrial desert, if it is true that there are areas of the South that have been able to react to the economic crisis in a stronger and more dynamic way than some areas of the Center-North, it is also true that these results can be ephemeral if we do not invest in protecting the growth of human capital, if we do not trigger mechanisms capable of retaining energy, intelligence, skills".
Professor Pier Giorgio Ardeni dwelt on the eternal dilemma of failed or delayed development and whether history could have gone differently. Ardeni identified three historical moments that increased the gap between North and South.
“In the history of Italian development there have been three historical moments in which the trajectories between North and South have increased the gap: the 80s and 90s at the end of the nineteenth century; the second in the 20s and the third in the 900s and 50s with an insufficient land reform in which the North-East industrializes with the migration of labor from the countryside of the South. To reduce this gap there was the decisive moment of the extraordinary intervention for the South, concluded in 60.
Today the gap exists and has increased. There is, again, a social block that seems to prefer the status quo, so we need to rethink future development”.
Historian Giuseppe Iglieri analyzed the effects of the extraordinary intervention in the South: "The parable of the extraordinary intervention represents a significant phase in the history of Italian economic development. At that time, the Southern question was placed at the center of national politics, but once the intervention was over, the Southern question and the logic of the intervention were criticized, almost erased.
From that moment on, the false myth that the southern regions must make it on their own was fueled, but once that 'crutch' was removed, it was expected that the South would proceed autonomously without anyone having taught it to walk alone. In this political rather than economic space, the transition from the southern question to the southern questions matured and an internal imbalance in the South was fueled.
Now the goal is to recover the Southern question and the international dynamics and become a point of reference in the Mediterranean that will project us into the challenges of the future. Giving priority to fundamental elements such as water, for example, which for me represents the 'white oil' that the South is rich in will become crucial in international economies. And then we need to elevate the problems of the South to elements of national key. A South in full development can help the North”.
Labor sociologist Giustina Orientale Caputo analyzed recent years: “Quality of work, flexibility, precariousness are elements that we all know. What scares me in this historical moment is that young people have an expiring horizon: the expiration of contracts. 'When you expire' has, unfortunately, become a way of being and thinking”. The professor then focused on the historical analysis of the labor market, with a comparison between the data of 1959 and those of 2024 in which the reference values between population and employment rate are practically numerically superimposable.
“In 1959 the resident population was 48 million, the employed were 20 million. In 2024, compared to a population of 59 million there are 24 million employed. This is to say that the world has not changed, the unemployment rate has dropped slightly, but 70 years have passed. Not wanting to think about the transformations has meant that in these years the situation has remained almost the same.
Broadly speaking, we have not been able or willing to intervene in the labor market. What is happening to the southern working class must necessarily lead to a reflection on changing working conditions”.
Professor Paola De Vivo based her speech on the prospects for recovery: "We need to have forward-looking visions, the objective difficulties of industry need to be accompanied by a modern and innovative recovery: relaunching sustainable policies, working without polluting, focusing on the quality of work. Industrial policies must question themselves on how socially inclusive they can be. And this must also be done through training, the one you are doing here and the one we do with the university.
Industrial policies must be linked to training policies that also pass through school policies. There is much talk of 'Gender' in this country but even in training this word has never been taken into account. We must bring out the inactive, mostly women, and the unemployed and make them employable.
When we analyze the current policies for development it seems that the contents go in one direction and the concrete reality goes in another direction. The risk, with the current conditions, is that not only the South but the whole of Italy will go backwards, so my invitation is to work as a team to create new opportunities for development”.
The general secretary of the CGIL Naples and Campania, placed at the center of his speech the current situation of the Region and the need to continue the battle on differentiated autonomy: "Beyond the paradigm shifts and the narratives built on optimism, we must put at the center of the political and trade union discussion a new issue of the South".
Nicola Ricci stated. “The battle against differentiated autonomy – Ricci added – must be carried forward. Starting from the government, there is an inconceivable distraction on the crises that are hitting the South. Change is possible, with development policies, attacking some strategic sectors.
The disputes that currently concern us concern aerospace and automotive and all the small and medium-sized businesses that are struggling and cannot count on adequate industrial planning to compete on international markets. Campania cannot help but be a protagonist in this discussion and we, as a union, are ready to do our part”.
Luca Bianchi, general manager of Svimez, focused on future prospects and the analysis of the present: "After an absolutely positive year - Bianchi stated - for 2025 we too, like Svimez, are recording a reversal of the trend.
There are some signs of worsening that concern both the labor market, but above all also the public finance framework and the recovery policies that will have to be implemented with the new European stability plan".
"The 2025 budget law - Bianchi recalled - has already marked a reduction in resources for the South that we have estimated at around 5 billion in the next three years. This is affected by the reduction in the Southern contribution which was a fundamental instrument, which has been partly recovered, but greatly weakened. So the problem now is that we risk being a moment of negative turning point". Bianchi then raised the alarm of degrowth for the cuts to investments in the South and for the law of differentiated autonomy wanted by the Meloni Government.
"The South is not as they tell us, it is not an industrial desert, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, the presence of the automotive industry are important resources. History tells us that when the attitude towards the South changed, the trend was reversed.
In the post-Covid period, the crisis was responded to with expansionary policies, income policies (the citizen's income that benefited over a million people), we began to invest, there was a large European investment plan, which started - I say - from a southern principle. The European 'next generation' plan required that gender, generational and territorial inequalities that are linked to each other be reduced.
This has meant that that type of investment together with income support made the South grow like the rest of the country and the North more than Europe. This shows that if you invest in the South you invest in a territory that makes the rest of Italy grow.
There are many problems in the South but it is a place that has important potential. The South must become an industrial hub linked to the energy transition.
Policies for productive development and citizenship policies go hand in hand. This is why differentiated autonomy attacks the principles and extinguishes the dreams of the constitution, if the rights are different on the territory it is very difficult for these kids to grow up”.
A bridge between the past and the future is what Francesco Sinopoli, president of the Di Vittorio Foundation, built during his speech at the 'Viste da Sud' meeting held in Naples. “The great transformation processes that are underway – said Sinopoli – assign us an enormous responsibility.
That of having the strength, the courage to question a development model that is unsustainable, that should not be imitated and that can see in Southern Italy and the world an alternative. The only alternative to deliver the world to future generations. We need another idea of society, another idea of participatory, shared democracy, and we need to literally rethink the foundations of development, question the very word development as it has been connoted in the last 70 years.
In our future project there must be an idea of development, aware that development intended as wild capitalism is destructive of humanity. Cassano was right that in modernity a certain type of capitalism had prevailed, but that idea of capitalism is no longer sustainable, for us and for the people we represent.
We need to think about another development, we need a European perspective. Science and technology applied to renewables are a key that would allow us to valorize the knowledge of these lands, we need planning, negotiated autonomy and democracy and large investments by the State. We can do this if the South also returns to propose itself as a subject of thought. Investing in these territories through policies of reception and integration, we need an alternative project of society. Furthermore, safeguarding the point of view of the South in this time is fundamental. When we have defeated differentiated autonomy with the Referendum we will have to imagine another society”.
The political and programmatic conclusions were entrusted to Christian Ferrari, secretary of the National Cgil: "First of all, we want to highlight a fundamental point: the conditions and prospects of the whole of Italy, including the North, depend on the conditions and prospects of the South.
This is a political point that has now been lost even in the political agenda and we want to say that in addition to the many problems there is also extraordinary potential. With differentiated autonomy we risk not only not going in the direction of reducing gaps and relaunching the Southern production system, but compromising its prospects.
And in this way we are harming all of Italy”. On differentiated autonomy, Ferrari added, “we also consider the ruling of the Constitutional Court as our political victory, but however diminished, the Calderoli law can still do a lot of harm to the people we represent, from healthcare to health and safety legislation. The issue of Lep (Essential Levels of Performance) with unchanged resources is now a farce.
Not only is there no money to guarantee them throughout Italy, but with the budget law, the structural plan that was launched by the government, there will be even less. We think that this is a battle worth fighting. We want to complete the work - concluded Ferrari - and have a definitive say on this project that is shattering Italy. We think that, in addition to the unconstitutional aspects, there is a merit and a political direction that is not right and that we want to defeat".
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