Despite the repeated obituaries for trade unions in the Italian press and on the right, one part of Italy’s economy still has a strong union presence: the public sector. It employs 3.4 million people, roughly a fifth of all employees in the country.
The public sector is the only part of the economy with certified data on union representation, covering both membership and elections of workplace representatives. According to periodic assessments by ARAN, the agency that represents public employers in collective bargaining, union density reached 51% in 2025, up from 47% in 2012. That is striking in a country where overall union density is estimated at between 25% and 30%. Over the same period, turnout in elections of public-sector union representatives remained broadly stable, at around 66–67% — higher than in parliamentary elections. Unions have therefore strengthened their membership while largely resisting the decline in electoral participation seen across European democracies.
A changing public sector
Public employment has changed structurally in little more than a decade. Austerity after the 2008 financial crisis cut the workforce by 119,000 between 2009 and 2013; the following decade restored only part of that loss. Italy still has tens of thousands fewer public employees than before austerity. The changes have been uneven. Compared with 2009, staffing in central government, including ministries, fell by 23%, and in local government by 20.5%. Healthcare employment rose slightly, by 1.5%, while employment in schools and universities fell by 2.4%.
Despite these changes and substantial staff turnover in recent years, public-sector unions have grown stronger. Membership now exceeds half of the workforce, and rose by 119,000 between 2021 and 2024 alone. But the sectoral picture varies. In central government, which suffered the deepest cuts, union density fell from 49.6% in 2012 to 42.5% in 2025. In local government, where fragmented workplaces have traditionally made unionisation harder, it fell to 28.8%. Growth came instead from the two sectors less affected by job cuts over the past fifteen years: union density rose from 51.3% to 57.3% in schools and universities, and from 51.5% to 57.8% in healthcare.
Which unions are growing?
ARAN’s figures also show which unions have benefited most from rising membership.
Across the public sector, unions affiliated to the three main confederations — CGIL, CISL and UIL — remain by far the largest. In 2025 they accounted for 62.9% of union members; the original article puts this at 30.1% of all public employees. Their combined share of union membership nevertheless fell from 68.8% in 2012. All three now have more members in absolute terms, but CISL’s share fell from 27.6% to 24.1%, and CGIL’s from 26% to 21.4%. UIL’s rose from 15.1% to 17.3%. The confederations have recovered some ground recently: between 2021 and 2024, their affiliates accounted for 79,000 of the 119,000 additional union members. Their combined membership share remains overwhelmingly high in local government, at 82%, slightly above its 2012 level. Elsewhere it has fallen: by about five percentage points in central government and education, and 7.2 points in healthcare.
Editorial note: The original gives overall union density of 51% and a 62.9% membership share for the three confederations, but also puts their membership at 30.1% of all public employees. Multiplying the first two figures gives about 32.1%. The original does not explain this discrepancy; its figures are retained as reported.
More militant, grassroots unions have not generally benefited from the confederations’ relative decline. They remain small across most of the public sector. Schools and universities are an exception: their presence has grown, though their membership remains limited. In 2025, the two main grassroots organisations in education, Cobas Scuola and USB PI, represented around 13,000 workers, or 1.6% of union members in that sector. “Today’s public-sector union landscape is the result of years of political and trade union retreat, which have led workers to adopt an individualistic outlook focused on improving their own position,” explains Cristiano Fiorentini of USB PI’s national executive. “In such a context, grassroots unionism is very much working against the wind.”
Occupation-specific and autonomous unions have increased their membership share instead. Particularly notable is the growth of organisations representing a single occupational group — teachers within education, nurses within healthcare, and so on. In education, the main such teachers’ unions, Gilda and Anief, now account for 18.2% of union members, nearly a fifth, compared with just over a tenth in 2012. In healthcare, the two largest nurses’ unions, Nursind and Nursing Up, account for 18.4%, up from 10.8% in 2012.
Views differ on why these unions are growing. “Representation by the confederations proved inadequate,” says Andrea Bottega, national secretary of Nursind. “Nurses’ responsibilities and training requirements increased, yet they continued to be treated in the same way as professions that had not undergone the same changes.” Federico Bozzanca, general secretary of FP CGIL, offers another interpretation: “As healthcare has been weakened, we have seen a rush to defend particular interests, often presented as being at odds with the interests of the system as a whole.”
Why union democracy holds up
Union density has risen, while participation in a central exercise of union democracy — elections to the RSU, the elected joint workplace representative bodies — has remained broadly stable. RSU have been mandatory in public-sector workplaces since 1998 and are renewed every three years. Turnout fell only slightly, from 67.2% of eligible voters in 2012 to 66.3% in 2025. By comparison, turnout in parliamentary elections fell from 75% in 2013 to 63% in 2022.
Again, sectoral differences matter. Turnout rose only in healthcare, by 3.5 percentage points. It fell by 0.5 points in local government, 3.6 points in central government and 4.2 points in schools and universities. Nevertheless, participation remains high. “RSU are the main actors in workplace bargaining,” explains Federico Bozzanca of FP CGIL. “They connect democratic participation with negotiations that can improve pay and working conditions.” High turnout may therefore reflect workers’ recognition of representatives’ practical role in negotiating supplementary workplace agreements. While political democracy has been weakened by representative institutions losing real power, union democracy has held up partly because elected workplace representatives still exercise tangible bargaining power.
The distribution of votes has changed, just as membership has. In the 2025 RSU elections, the three confederations’ affiliates received 70.7% of votes, about four percentage points below their 2012 share. Their combined share ranged from 85.9% in local government to 62.9% in central government. UIL alone gained ground over the period, by two percentage points, while CISL lost 1.5 points and CGIL 3.5 points. The confederations perform substantially better in elections, with 70.7% of votes, than in membership, where they account for 62.9%. This pattern appears across the public sector and can only partly be explained by their more extensive workplace presence. CGIL provides a striking example in education: with 20% of union members, it wins 27.6% of votes. “It shows that we are a union for all workers, offering representation without requiring membership,” says Gianna Fracassi, general secretary of FLC CGIL. “In our sector, an RSU vote is a choice of direction: permanent jobs for precarious workers, renewal of the collective agreement, and defence of schools, universities and public research. That programme wins support well beyond our own members.”
Public sector today, private sector tomorrow?
The particular conditions of public employment partly explain unions’ resilience. Greater job security makes workers less vulnerable to retaliation for union activity or membership. Mandatory elected workplace bodies also strengthen unions, bringing Italy closer to countries such as Austria and Germany, where worker representation is more firmly institutionalised. This hybrid arrangement may help explain why Italy’s public-sector unions have followed a different path from declining unions elsewhere in the West. Although unions are generally stronger in the public sector than in private employment, Italy stands out for its continuing rise in public-sector union density.
As we have seen, this strength varies by sector. Effective workplace bargaining appears to make union democracy useful in workers’ eyes, while the requirement to have elected representatives also plays an important role. The proposed agreement on representation being negotiated by the confederations and employers’ associations therefore deserves close attention, despite disputes over aspects of the negotiations that only appear secondary. If institutions that support union democracy have helped unions grow in the public sector, a similar approach could help them in the private sector too.
Stefano Poggi is a research fellow at the University of Padua, studying the social and environmental effects of the nineteenth-century privatisation of common resources. In addition to the trade unionists quoted, he thanks Stefano Bagnara.
Yorumlar
Henüz yorum yok.