In just over a week, on Tuesday 7 May, there will be a 24-hour strike at Rai called by the UsigRai union. “Who cares!” it could be the comment and end it here. But, arming ourselves with holy patience, we can evaluate the reasons for the announced abstention from work: dusting off old slogans,fight hard without fearbecause the Meloni government has put (would have put) the nibble on public television. The statement reads Usigrai: «The suffocating control over journalistic work, with the attempt to reduce Rai to the government’s megaphone, the absence of a RAI information project from the industrial plan, the staff shortages in all the editorial offices, the no of the company to a public selection for journalists, the failure to replace maternity leavers, the cancellation of the agreement on the performance bonus, without a real willingness to negotiate, the failure to stabilize temporary colleagues”. Blah, blah, blah. The immediate response comes not from Rai but from Unirai, the centre-right trade union: «What is asphyxiating is that there are those who do not resign themselves to pluralism in Rai and together with some parties suffer the end of the monopoly. You will confirm that you will not join the political strike.” Here too, bla-bla-bla: hot air, fluff.
One hundred years of radio and seventy years of television in Italy have not changed its political substance. In fact, times change, fashions change, governments change, but at Rai, the state TV paid for by Italians, the subdivision is the same as always. Worse, because at the time of the Christian Democrat “patron” Ettore Bernabei, general director from 1961 to 1974, in addition to the news for the use and consumption of the “crusader shield”, there was journalistic and cultural quality: there were programs like TV7, dramas taken from great literary works such as the Odyssey, Tolstoy’s novels, by Manzoni, by Cronin and TV series such as Acts of the Apostles directed by Rossellini, Moses, Jesus of Nazareth directed by Zeffirelli, there were the true political Tribunes, focused on content, not on shouting and insults. And so on. Today he has become a “hero” like any other Fazio, presented as a martyr of Rai for the move to another TV channel not because he was censored or kicked out but for a (legitimate) question of money. Not to mention, if one can say on the other front, the Scurati case and the monologue on April 25th rejected by Rai in order not to pay 1800 euros (1600 euros is the average monthly salary of a metalworker and 1800 euros, in any case, is the monthly salary of many Rai employees), exploited by Usigrai and by the left and surrounding areas, for an electoral purpose in view of the European and administrative elections of 8 and 9 June. Don’t let anyone talk Darken up at Rai it was, as Fantozzi would have said, “bullshit”. But beating about the bush as the Pd & Co. are still doing demonstrates, beyond the exploitation of nothingness, that there are no other political arguments to try not to lose these important elections too. At that time? Thinking that this Democratic Party and this left will change, not only in electoral propaganda, is also an illusion. This war, so to speak, between the two unions Rai, is a “already seen” that this time too will lead to nothing, much less to something that can improve public information. Rai will remain a battleground between the parties. Palace games. Questions of power.