Delicate Balance of Power

On a recent morning in his office overlooking the cypress trees of the 16th-century Villa Borghese, Epifani proudly displayed a book showcasing the union's collection of modern Spanish paintings. He openly discussed his agnosticism, never mind the Catholicism that dominates Italian society. And despite the extreme leftist credentials of his union, Epifani is its first secretary general who is not now nor has ever been a communist. He identifies himself as a socialist.

"This is a revolution in Italy," Tiziano Treu, a former Labor Department minister, said of Epifani's politics.

But Epifani's role is very much in keeping with Italian tradition, as he wields power that his union counterparts in the United States have not known for generations. As head of CGIL, he speaks for 5.6 million workers in a country with a population of about 58 million.

In large part, Italy's enduring labor power is the result of the continued currency of left-wing ideology in its politics; a vibrant Communist Party still is active, though its members are really proponents of democratic socialism. Union power also reflects Italy's vulnerable place in the world economy: About one-fourth of all Italian jobs are still in manufacturing, nearly double that of the United States. Many are in the industries most susceptible to low-wage competition, such as textiles and shoemaking.

Epifani, born in Rome in 1950 and raised mostly in Milan, where his father worked as an insurance company manager, was supposed to be a doctor. But at the University of Rome he lasted only three months in the study of medicine, preferring philosophy. The works of Darwin undercut his traditional Catholic faith. "I reached a point at which I was willing and able to question the existence of God," he said.

Upon graduation, he took a job as a lecturer in modern history, but he quickly grew disenchanted, feeling that he was isolated from the currents of his era. Fascists competed with leftists of every stripe -- Leninists, Maoists and Socialists -- for Italy's identity. Labor unions pressed for worker rights in what seemed the vanguard of a broader struggle for democracy.

In 1974, Epifani took a job in a publishing house attached to the CGIL. By the early 1980s, he had become secretary general for the polygraph and paper union, a CGIL affiliate that represents media workers. Hours were long, he said. He and his wife, a doctor, never started a family. "You lived and breathed the life of the union," he said. "The children never came."

The polygraph union offered a foretaste of today. Television was carving into print media. Typesetters were being replaced by computers. Printing was being shifted to cheaper presses in Hong Kong. "Many lost their jobs, and we had to retrain them for new jobs," he said.

In 1990, Epifani reached the central leadership of the CGIL. Four years later, he was elevated to the No. 2 position. When Sergio Cofferati bowed out as secretary general to enter politics in 2002, Epifani took over.

Cofferati, a pugnacious former factory worker, reveled in fiery oratory and backslapping. He was a hero of the more radical elements within the union. As a patrician intellectual, Epifani had a lot to prove, something that analysts say has made him more confrontational.

He has been a primary critic of the center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose attacks on labor power have been largely unsuccessful. He has refused to negotiate on a revision to laws that make it prohibitively difficult for companies to fire people.

He has also held firm against another key goal of the employers' association -- the right to negotiate individual deals with unions at the local and company level. Under a system in place for more than a decade, the employers' association now negotiates national contracts with the unions that guarantees minimum wages for everyone. This allows the unions to leverage the size of their confederations and the threat of broad strikes to extract stronger deals for the weakest members.