Camera del Lavoro were centers for Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 Syndicalist labor unions, modeled on the French Bourse du Travail

Bourse du Travail

The Bourse du Travail , a French form of the labour council, were working class organizations that encouraged mutual aid, education, and self-organization amongst their members in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.-Labor:Early Third Republic France was a time of dramatic social and...

, which flourished from 1895 to the rise of Fascism in the 1920s.

In its initial conception, Camere del Lavoro brought together all unions in a given locality, gave them a shared democratic political structure, and provided services to unions, workers, and communities. Most were initially funded by reformist, socialist and radical

Radicalization

Radicalization is the process in which an individual changes from passiveness or activism to become more revolutionary, militant or extremist. Radicalization is often associated with youth, adversity, alienation, social exclusion, poverty, or the perception of injustice to self or others.-...

 municipal councils.

Ideologically, many of the founders of Camere were syndicalists, anarchists, socialists, and those involved the cooperative

Cooperative

A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...

 movement. The first founders saw Camere as less a union hall, and more the seeds of a future horizontalist

Horizontalidad

Horizontality or horizontalism is a social relationship that advocates the creation, development and maintenance of social structures for the equitable distribution of management power...

 societal structure. But by the time of the First World War, unions were consolidating into politically divergent federations, and most Camere were wedded to one or another.

With the rise of the socialist (later communist

Italian Communist Party

The Italian Communist Party 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 . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

) led Confederazione Generale del Lavoro

Confederazione Generale del Lavoro

Confederazione Generale del Lavoro was an Italian labor union, founded in 1906, under the initiative of communist and socialist militants...

, and the cross party union concentration following the Second World War, Camere del Lavoro became simply the headquarters of union locals.

There are several thousand operating today; one in most every Italian town. Most are tied to the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro union, though most leftist labor groups maintain their own.

See also

• Unione Sindacale Italiana
  Unione Sindacale Italiana
  Unione Sindacale Italiana is an anarcho-syndicalist trade union. It is the Italian section of the International Workers Association , and the name of USI is...
  
  
• Confederazione Generale del Lavoro
  Confederazione Generale del Lavoro
  Confederazione Generale del Lavoro was an Italian labor union, founded in 1906, under the initiative of communist and socialist militants...
  
  
• Anarchism in Italy
  Anarchism in Italy
  Italian anarchism as a movement began primarily from the influence of Mikhail Bakunin, Giuseppe Fanelli, and Errico Malatesta. From there it expanded to include illegalist individualist anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalism. It participated in the biennio rosso and survived fascism...
  
  
• Autonomism
  Autonomism
  Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist communism...
  
  
• Fasci Siciliani
  Fasci Siciliani
  The Fasci Siciliani, short for Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori , were a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration, which arose in Sicily in the years between 1889 and 1894...
  
  

External links

http://www.cgil.milano.it/: The website of the Milan Camera del Lavoro, and the Milan branch of the CGIL. 1900-2000. Centenario della Camera del Lavoro di Ravenna: History of the CGIL Camera del Lavoro in Ravenna

Ravenna

Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...

. Documents relating to the Camera di Empoli, founded 1901: Public archive of the city of Empoli

Empoli

Empoli is a town and comune in Tuscany, Italy, about 20 km southwest of Florence, to the south of the Arno in a plain formed by the latter river. The plain has been usable for agriculture since Roman times. The commune's territory becomes a hilly one as it departs from the river...

. Documents on the Camera del Lavoro in Flori, including its political split of 1912. Archive of documents and photos on the Camerae del Lavoro of the Anarcho-Syndicalist USI, 1910s-1920s