The Red Brigades Return

Union leaders had been touting Saturday's massive march on the capital as a "grand party." Rock bands, celebrities and local theater groups would add spice to the already fired-up movement arrayed against the labor reforms proposed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government. Though the crowds came, by most estimates well over a million people, the festivities were called off. Banners denouncing terrorism replaced union slogans calling for walkouts. Across the oval field at the ancient Circus Maximus, a strong wind whipped at red trade-union flags taped with the black borders of mourning. Once again in sunny Italy, a cold-blooded political assassination rained on everyone's parade.

Last week's murder of top labor ministry consultant Marco Biagi, an architect of Berlusconi's proposed reforms, carried Italians back to the dark days of the 1970s and '80s when a wave of terrorist attacks defined the nation's political and social landscape. Biagi was killed outside his Bologna home. Followed from the train station by two people on a moped, the 51-year-old father of two was shot four times. A group calling itself the Red Brigades — the same band of left-wing terrorists that carried out previous attacks — claimed responsibility. In a rambling manifesto posted on the Web, the group spewed antiquated Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Last week's assassination was a virtual replay of the still unsolved slaying three years ago in Rome of another labor ministry consultant, Massimo D'Antona. The profiles of the victims are strikingly similar: both men divided their time between the professor's lectern and the government negotiating table; both were well-known and respected within government and academic circles but virtually unknown to the general public. "Easy targets," noted Donatella Della Porta, a terrorist expert at the University of Florence. Police even believe the same pistol was used to kill both men.

Biagi and D'Antona were both dedicated reformers, passionately committed to modernizing Italy's labor laws. Biagi was one of the most articulate proponents of loosening up Italy's notoriously tight labor market. He had spearheaded the government's efforts to phase out Article 18, a measure that allows unjustly fired workers to get their jobs back rather than settle for financial damages. Labor leaders fiercely defend Article 18, which they say protects workers against arbitrary firings. The Red Brigades has a long history of striking against would-be labor-market reformers. Della Porta says the terror group believes that modernizers like Biagi represent "the left that has betrayed the working class." After the attack, the unions toned down their rhetoric and Berlusconi called for compromise.

Interior Minister Claudio Scajola has been forced to respond to criticism that Biagi had not recently been assigned government bodyguards. His escorts had been removed as part of a reduction of cover for individual domestic targets when law-enforcement resources were shifted to the fight against terrorism following Sept. 11. After repeatedly receiving death threats as the debate over labor reforms escalated, Biagi had pleaded for his protection to be restored. After the murder, Scajola opened an internal investigation as to why protection wasn't reinstated soon enough, but nonetheless said that even bodyguards cannot guarantee that terrorists won't strike their targets.

The second killing in three years of a government labor adviser is especially chilling for people who work in the field. Statements in the separate manifestos released after each killing refer to details of the work of the victims that only insiders could have known, suggesting that there may be a terrorist mole involved in government-labor negotiations. "You begin to look around," says one government economist who recently worked with Biagi. "You think about being more careful, working in a more hidden manner, maybe not putting your name on a particular document."

But the debate over labor reform is not going away. In a videotaped message Friday night, Berlusconi said terrorism would not stop his government's push for reform. At Saturday's march, Sergio Cofferati, head of Italy's largest union, said the terrorists "will not intimidate us," confirming that plans to hold Italy's first general strike in a decade are still on for next month. United in their condemnation of the Red Brigades, the union movement and the government are nevertheless headed for a showdown.