Giulia Barbucci: "Over these months, the voice of the trade unions has been stronger than ever"

11 March, back to Rome, back home. Heavy atmosphere, anxiety; in Northern Italy they are already counting the dead. My daughter Ilaria has returned from Milan where she studies; my eldest, Miriam, lives and works in Barcelona, and is very worried.

In the evening, the prime minister Mr Conte announces a lockdown for the whole country. A lockdown is already in place in the "red zones" in the North, requiring people from those areas to isolate.

The schools are closed, the football league and recreational and sporting activities suspended, and visiting patients in hospital is prohibited. No travel is allowed by public or private transport, and non-essential economic activities are halted.

A cloak of unreality envelopes Italy. Disorientation, fear: the virus seems to be getting out of control and becoming unstoppable.

Two images encapsulate the harsh reality: the convoy of military trucks in Bergamo transporting bodies out of the region, as the cemeteries were full, and the powerful, indelible image of Pope Francis praying in an empty St Peter's Square, broadcast worldwide on television on 28 March.

The Italian trade unions took action immediately with the government on ensuring the safety of essential businesses, which had to be kept open to ensure that people could purchase essential supplies in supermarkets and medicines in pharmacies. The trade unions never stopped working, supporting those losing their jobs, seeking agreements with employers to launch remote working, and securing income support, with incomes becoming insecure.

The hospitals are overwhelmed: running out of beds, and with intensive care units pushed to their limits, as also are health workers: nurses, doctors, orderlies forced to stay away from home in quarantine, working flat out, with the huge psychological burden of caring for people who are dying without the comfort of their loved ones.

At that time we all said that "we would not forget what had happened". Now we are trying to move forward, but the virus is not defeated: small or large outbreaks are popping up across the EU, and each country is responding in its own way, with its own measures. It is precisely now that the EU, thanks to the huge economic support it has deployed for all countries, should act in a united way by coordinating the efforts of individual Member States; we realise, however, how difficult this still is. But we will not win this war acting individually.

Over these months, the voice of the trade unions has been stronger than ever. The trade union is not an abstract concept: it is workers pointing a country towards rightful demands for social equality, dignity and respect. People who have experienced the reality of the hospitals, care homes for the elderly, shops, cleaning, transport, businesses in which basic workplace health and safety rights are infringed can tell us how to change an economic and social model that is revealing its limitations and threatening the future of those who will come after us.

So, this is what I would like for my daughters, Ilaria studying in Milan, and Miriam working in Barcelona: a world that fits them, and is sustainable economically, environmentally and socially.