After a difficult start and numerous disagreements between various trade unions represented, CISL managed to gain a voice through its representatives in the
Italian Parliament, asking for increased and autonomous presence of the companies partly owned by the state. In 1956, owing to CISL initiatives, the latter had separated from the employers' group
Confindustria and had formed the
Intersind – meant to establish a new base for relation between the state and trade unions. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the confederation coordinated
strike actions of the
metalworkers and workers in
electromechanics, as well as the labour dispute in
Milan. Its great success came in 1963, when it negotiated with electromechanics employers new bonuses, means of promotion, and awards in accordance with increased productivity. Nonetheless, trade union activities on factory grounds remained exceptionally difficult, and workers attempting them risked being sacked. When the
Italian economy sunk in the mid-1960s, CISL suffered an internal crisis as numerous of its branches believed the political function of the union to be incompatible with its labour goals. The 6th Congress it held in 1969 sanctioned the view, and renounced its activities in Parliament. The following years proved to be especially tumultuous for Italy as a whole: while traditional trade unionism was being reshaped by the
student movement and secondary impact of the
decolonization and
Third World ideologies, the local scene saw the advent of
terrorism of the
Red Brigades and the
Neo-Fascist Strategy of tension (carried out by the
National Vanguard). CISL doubled its specific activism with an advocacy of
democracy, siding with the
civil society. In July 1972, it co-founded the
Federazione unitaria, meant as a transitional group, which became a rather
bureaucratical institution. CISL signed an agreement with other national federations in 1975, calling for a readjustment of the
salary-
pension balance, as well as for a new
minimum wage. Federazione unitaria also proposed a new tactic at its Congress in 1978, calling for a larger perspective of the unions – one mindful of the national economical policy. In 1983 CISL founded
ISCOS, Trade Union Institute for Development Cooperation. The gradual decrease of
inflation in the 1980s and 1990s (again at under 10 per cent in 1984). The state intervention in the economy in order to decrease labour costs was sanctioned by the population in the
1985 Italian referendum, after being backed by accords in which the CISL played a major part (the policy was opposed by the confederation's left-wing, as well as by the CGIL and the
Italian Communist Party). The CISL was part in two protocols with the Italian executive, in 1992 and 1993, both of which agreed to allow tight control of the inflation rate and
government debt. From 1994 onwards, it convened to the creation of the
Rappresentanze sindacali unitarie (
Unitary Representatives of Trade Unions), a trans-federative organism meant to ensure a preliminary democratic agreement on all labour matters, and also intended as a step towards a new single trade union. ==General Secretaries==