The Unione Sammarinese Lavoratori (USL) opens its fifth confederal congress tomorrow evening, Wednesday 23 September: three days at the Welcome Hotel in the Dogana World Trade Center, with Secretary General Francesca Busignani‘s address at 9pm and the renewal of the leadership on Friday morning, exactly one year after the first of two general strikes against the IGR tax reform. The title is itself 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 shorter working week, from the ICEE means-tested benefit index to artificial intelligence.
The starting point is precisely that dispute. The congress documents describe it as proof that mobilisation, when it brings numbers and proposals, can shift decisions: two general strikes, on 23 September and 7 October 2025, and rallies the document calls an absolute record for San Marino, which led to a substantially amended reform before the November vote (in the Chamber, the majority had preferred to credit the change to dialogue instead). The union is now asking for the next step: that protection of wages and pensions from fiscal drag become a stable guarantee, no longer dependent, “case by case,” on the government’s willingness to act.
The chapter likely to spark debate well beyond the assembly halls concerns working time.
USL is proposing to trial a reduction in working hours with no cut in pay, including a four-day week, through pilot projects lasting at least a year and without intensifying workloads. The underlying principle fits in one line: if innovation frees up time, “that time cannot automatically be filled with more work.”
On artificial intelligence, the union skips the usual clash between supporters and sceptics and instead asks who decides, using what data, and to whose benefit.
The red line is unambiguous: no decision on hiring, performance evaluations, shifts, pay or dismissals may be entrusted to an automated system. An algorithm can assist, but it cannot fire you.
On welfare, the congress falls just ahead of a concrete deadline: on Thursday 1 October, the trial phase of the ICEE [Household Economic Condition Indicator] begins. USL considers its introduction the right move, but warns that the indicator must not become a way of gradually 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 stance is favourable, but with clearly stated conditions: USL sees it as a necessary step to avoid leaving San Marino behind, but insists that openness to Europe must not be confused “with blanket acceptance of any consequence whatsoever,” and that alignment with European rules must not be used as an excuse 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 precisely to the trade 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 behind it, as the country’s youngest union, and with a congress season that has already reshuffled its federations: Antonella Marani now leads the Pensioners’ federation, Ricardo Daniel Ceccoli has replaced Marco Santolini at Services and Commerce, and Daniele Tomasetti has been confirmed at Industry and Crafts.
Its record includes membership of 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 itself.
The schedule.
Wednesday opens at 8.30pm, with the address at 9pm and institutional guests from 10pm. Thursday from 9.15am features trade unions, international guests and employers’ associations, with the floor passing to delegates from 2.45pm.
Friday is reserved for delegates, who will vote on the statutory bodies and leadership: secretary general, president and confederal secretary, a post for which Busignani has already announced Marco Santolini‘s move.
The newly elected secretary general’s closing remarks are set for 11am.
Pensions, housing, cross-border workers, the declining birth rate, disability, workers over 50: we will report on the rest of the motions as the congress unfolds.
The slogan reads “on one side only.”
The programme, however, brings every other side onto the Dogana stage as well.
