The Unione Sammarinese Lavoratori (USL) opens its 5th confederal congress tomorrow evening, Wednesday 23 September: three days at the Welcome Hotel in Dogana’s WTC, with Secretary General Francesca Busignani‘s address at 9pm and the renewal of leadership on Friday morning — exactly one year after the first of two general strikes against the IGR tax reform. The title itself is a statement of intent, “On one side only, on the side of the people”, and the motions delegates will find on the table range from taxation to the four-day week, from ICEE to artificial intelligence.
The starting point is precisely that dispute. The congress motions describe it as proof that mobilization, when backed by numbers and proposals, can shift decisions: two general strikes, on 23 September and 7 October 2025, and demonstrations the document calls an absolute record for San Marino, leading to a substantially revised reform before the November vote (in the Chamber, the majority had preferred to credit the outcome to dialogue). Now the union is demanding the next step: that protection of salaries and pensions from fiscal drag become a stable guarantee, no longer dependent “case by case” on the government’s willingness.
The chapter likely to spark debate well beyond the assembly halls concerns working time.
USL is proposing to pilot a reduction in working hours at equal pay, including a four-day week, through trial projects lasting at least one year and without intensifying workloads. The principle is summed up in one line: if innovation frees up time, “that time cannot automatically be filled with more work.”
On artificial intelligence, the union skips the pro-and-con debate altogether and instead asks who decides, with what data, and to whose benefit.
The red line is clear: no decision on hiring, evaluations, shifts, wages or dismissals should be left to an automated system. Algorithms can assist — they cannot fire you.
On welfare, the congress falls just ahead of a concrete deadline: the ICEE trial begins on Thursday, 1 October. USL considers its introduction correct, but warns that the indicator must not become, piece by piece, a way of turning universal welfare into a system “reserved only for those able to prove they are poor enough.”
On the Association Agreement with the European Union, the union’s stance is favourable, with clearly stated conditions: USL views it as a necessary step forward to keep San Marino from falling behind, but insists that openness to Europe must not be confused “with blanket acceptance of every consequence,” nor should alignment with EU rules be used as a pretext to cut protections.
There is also a passage the other two confederations will read closely, not least because Thursday morning’s programme gives the floor specifically to the unions. USL acknowledges the historic role of CSdL and CDLS and pledges to seek unity “whenever the conditions exist,” but states plainly that representativeness “is neither inherited nor assumed: it is measured.”
USL arrives at this congress with eighteen years of history as the country’s youngest union, and with a congressional season that has already reshuffled its federations: Antonella Marani now leading the Pensioners’ branch, Ricardo Daniel Ceccoli replacing Marco Santolini at Services and Commerce, and Daniele Tomasetti confirmed at Industry and Craft.
Its record includes membership in the European and international trade union confederations, an Observatory on workplace harassment and violence that the union presents as the first of its kind, and the Unione Consumatori Sammarinesi, which extends protection beyond the workplace.
The schedule.
Wednesday: opening at 8.30pm, the keynote address at 9pm, followed by institutional guests from 10pm. Thursday: unions, international guests and employers’ associations from 9.15am, with the floor given to delegates from 2.45pm.
Friday, a day reserved for delegates, will see votes on statutory bodies and leadership: secretary general, president and confederal secretary — a role for which Busignani has already announced Marco Santolini‘s appointment.
At 11am, closing remarks from the newly elected secretary general.
Pensions, housing, cross-border workers, declining birth rates, disability, workers over 50: we will report on the remaining motions as the congress unfolds.
The slogan says “on one side only.”
The programme, meanwhile, brings every other side onto the stage in Dogana.
