Abstract

The book L’unità possibile. La Federazione Cgil, Cisl, Uil 1972-1984, edited by Franco Lotito, brings together essays and testimonies by scholars and trade unionists from different cultural backgrounds. It reconstructs the preparatory work, establishment, development, and fall of the CGIL CISL UIL Unitary Federation (1972-1984). It is a valuable text that, through historiographic and archival research, as well as interviews with its protagonists, contributes to bringing back to memory this important and unique trade union experience. The text collects the results of a joint effort lasted several years within Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, and therefore represents a necessary, important, open, prospective, and authentic research work. The Unitary Federation is unfortunately affected by a lack of consensus about its significance and value, which makes it a very interesting subject of study that can be developed further, not only to understand trade union patterns and trends, but also to study in depth more than a decade of Italian political, economic, and social history. Reflections on the book are complemented with a brief examination of the autobiographical interviews, published between 2019 and 2021, with two important protagonists of the CGIL CISL UIL Unitary Federation: Giorgio Benvenuto and Emilio Gabaglio