Sergio Garavini (18 May 1926 – 7 September 2001) was an Italian politician, writer and trade unionist.

Biography

Garavini was born in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...

. At a very young age, he entered the

Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy. The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) ...

(PCI) and the trade union

Italian General Confederation of Labour The Italian General Confederation of Labour (; CGIL) is a national trade union based in Italy. It was formed by agreement between socialists, communists, and Christian democrats in the "Pact of Rome" of June 1944. In 1950, socialists and Christi ...

(CGIL), which he contributed to reform after the defeat in the FIAT internal elections of 1955. He was subsequently regional secretary of CGIL, secretary of FIOM (CGIL's metallurgic workers confederation) and, finally, national secretary of CGIL. In the trade union conflict between

Fausto Bertinotti Fausto Bertinotti (born 22 March 1940) is an Italian politician who led the Communist Refoundation Party (''Partito della Rifondazione Comunista'') from 1994 to 2006. On 29 April 2006, after the centre-left coalition's victory in the Italian ...

(who always favoured strikes) and Sergio Cofferati (more incline to mediation), Garavini usually sided for the first policy, but also proposed intermediate solutions such as the intermittent strike or the permanent consultation. As a member of PCI, he supported Rossana Rossanda when she formed the party-newspaper '' il manifesto'' and was later expelled from the party, but Garavini never abandoned it. He was a staunch supporter of the automatic recovery of salaries against inflation, which was introduced thanks to CGIL in 1975. He was elected in the

Italian Chamber of Deputies The Chamber of Deputies ( it, Camera dei deputati) is the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Senate of the Republic). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform identical funct ...

in June 1987, being confirmed in the elections of five years later. When PCI secretary Achille Occhetto proposed to renounce to the party's communist nature and to form the

Democratic Party of the Left The Democratic Party of the Left ( it, Partito Democratico della Sinistra, PDS) was a democratic socialist and social-democratic political party in Italy. Founded in February 1991 as the post-communist evolution of the Italian Communist Party, t ...

, Garavini founded, on 15 December 1991, the Communist Refoundation Party, of which he was national secretary until 1993, when he resigned, being replaced by Fausto Bertinotti. In 1995 Garavini, then a deputy for the Communist Refoundation, voted confidence to the center cabinet led by

Lamberto Dini Lamberto Dini CGMG (born 1 March 1931) is an Italian politician and economist. He was the Director General of Bank of Italy from 1979 to 1994, Minister of Treasury from 1994 to 1996, the 51st Prime Minister of Italy from 1995 to 1996, and Forei ...

, in contrast with his party's guidelines. Subsequently, he left to form, together with the party's right wing such as Lucio Magri and Famiano Crucianelli, the

Movement of Unitarian Communists The Movement of Unitarian Communists (, MCU), or simply Unitarian Communists ( it, Comunisti Unitari), was a communist political party in Italy. History The party was founded in June 1995 as a split from the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC ...

, which in 1998 merged with the

Democrats of the Left The Democrats of the Left ( it, Democratici di Sinistra, DS) was a social-democratic political party in Italy. The DS, successor of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and the Italian Communist Party, was formed in 1998 upon the merger of th ...

. Garavini wrote numerous essays on Italian politics and trade unions, such as ''Ripensare l'illusione. Una prospettiva dalla fine del secolo'' of 1993. He died in Rome in September 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garavini, Sergio 1926 births 2001 deaths Politicians from Turin Italian Communist Party politicians 20th-century Italian politicians Communist Refoundation Party politicians Italian trade unionists

Biography

See also

References