Giorgio Fonio: a Ticinese trade unionist in the Swiss parliament
The Centre Party in southern Switzerland has sent a parliamentarian with strong social awareness to Bern. Giorgio Fonio, nearly 40, is a trade unionist who puts people and family squarely at the heart of what he does.
“What did you do today, Daddy?” Giorgio Fonio is clearly moved as he tells SWI swissinfo.ch about the phone call he had with his children on Wednesday, December 13, 2023, after his first session as a member of the Swiss federal parliament in Bern.
“I took part in electing new members of the Swiss government!” was Fonio’s reply.
Fonio, who will turn 40 on July 1, was born and bred in Mendrisio, the southernmost part of canton Ticino. A husband, father, trade unionist and, in his spare time, football referee, he was voted in last fall as a new member of the House of Representatives for the Italian-speaking canton, representing the Centre Party.
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He welcomes us in the meeting room of the headquarters of the trade union where he works, the Ticinese Christian Social Organisation (or OCST, after its Italian abbreviation) in Lugano. The building, by coincidence, is located just a stone’s throw from the city’s main thoroughfare, Corso Elvezia [the word Elvezia, or Helvetia, means Switzerland in Latin], and streets honouring two famous 19th-century politicians and federal ministers from Ticino: Giovanni Battista Pioda and Stefano Franscini. Working in such a location, Fonio was surely predestined to become a federal politician.
But that’s not right. Fonio’s background in no way presaged such a future. During the campaign for elections of the cantonal government and parliament in early 2023, the politician spoke publicly, and not without emotion, of his childhood and adolescence in a dysfunctional family: “From fourth grade on I was placed in a juvenile education centre, the Von Mentlen Institute in Bellinzona. When I was due to return home after finishing lower-secondary school, my mother passed away, so I stayed on at the institute until I was 18.”
“Giorgio has not changed a jot – he is always ready to lend a hand in case of need”
Football Club Lugano coach Mattia Croci
It was there, somewhat by chance, that his love for politics was born. At one stage, the institute was relocated to different premises during maintenance work. These were right next to the headquarters of the newspaper Il Dovere (the official journal of the Radical-Liberal Party of Ticino).
“I became an avid reader of the paper,” he says. “I used to get it from a skip where they threw away the first copies that were not perfectly printed. I read and I read. I liked politics. I was a big fan of Alex Pedrazzini [then Ticinese senator for the Christian Democratic Party, which merged with the Conservative Democratic Party to form the Centre in 2020]. He was for me rather like football players for kids today. A Roberto Carlos, as it were.”
But it was not Pedrazzini’s charisma that drew young Fonio closer to the then Christian Democratic Party. Pedrazzini is still his idol, but the choice of party was carefully thought through. Fonio did his research, read the different parties’ programmes and was impressed with the ideas of the Christian Democratic Party, which put the person and the family at the centre. These issues were close to his heart, probably because of his own history and personal experiences.
Fonio’s public confession is a manifesto of resilience, a message of hope to those who have no family or are going through hard times. “People often think that anyone who has achieved a professional and political position must have a wealthy or important family behind them. But it is not so,” he stresses. “My difficulties show that every one of us can conquer their place in the world if they are ready to struggle for it. You must just believe it is possible.”
A close friend and fellow Mendrisio native, Football Club Lugano coach Mattia Croci Torti, also highlights Fonio’s indomitable spirit.
“Giorgio has not changed a jot – he still has the same compelling character, that ability to bring people together, and he is always ready to lend a hand in case of need,” says Croci Torti. The two friends share some of the same characteristics, which they put to good use in their work, be it on the football pitch or in the federal parliament: they are enthusiastic, passionate and tenacious.
“You sometimes have to curb his enthusiasm,” Croci Torti admits, “but in all honesty I must say that Giorgio is always true to himself. He is a gentle fighter who, thanks to his personality, has managed to achieve results and be successful in politics, at work and in the family.”
Family at the centre
With his wife Nicole, whom he married in 2012, Fonio has built what he never had – a large and loving family. Today they have four children, aged three to ten years old.
Family plays a fundamental role in his life. They are “my greatest joy”, he says. Yet reconciling all his activities has become increasingly difficult, especially since his new political commitment in Bern. It would simply not be possible without “full support from the family, and here I must say that my wife Nicole plays a truly amazing role”.
The new parliamentarian is fully aware that his children are still very young. “We have to explain to them clearly that their daddy is going to Bern, but that he will be back. Our youngest daughter laughs and says that daddy is going to Beln [sic]… I want them to understand that politics is a service – a service rendered to the country.”
Politics and work
In the October 2023 federal elections, Fonio was the second most-voted candidate from the Centre, behind Fabio Regazzi of Locarno. In Ticino, the party is entitled to just one seat in the House of Representatives. However, Regazzi was also standing for the Senate and, in the run-off vote, was elected to it with overwhelming backing from Mendrisio. The message from the district was clear: the people wanted Fonio in the House of Representatives.
“For me, being elected to the parliament is something extraordinary and quite incredible,” he says. “When I think of the path I have taken, starting absolutely from scratch, I am deeply moved and nearly lost for words, even to this day.”
To be able to participate in federal politics, Fonio had to rethink his work as a trade unionist. He has had to reduce his working time, reorganise the internal set-up and redistribute tasks among his colleagues. “You don’t get anywhere on your own,” he says. Since February 2021, the politician has been in charge of the OCST Mendrisio regional secretariat, with 27 staff and some 12,000 members.
Left-wing politics
With Fonio, the Centre has sent to Bern a politician with a clear social awareness. Unlike his predecessor Regazzi, the Mendrisio trade unionist is on the left of his party’s political spectrum. Yet he identifies fully with the Centre. “At the first congress of the newly formed Centre,” he explains, “we voted on the guidelines: we are a party that puts the person at the heart of political life, that seeks to combine a social and responsible market economy; a party that wants to have a different approach from those parties that focus only on the economy.”
It is not surprising, then, that one of Fonio’s political references is, undoubtedly, Meinrado Robbiani, who from 1999 to 2011 was a member of parliament for the Christian Democratic Party and was known for his social awareness in Ticino and Switzerland as a whole. “Robbiani was my first OCST cantonal secretary,” says Fonio. “He was, and still is, an important political reference for me.” Above all he admires the way Robbiani was respected by everyone as a politician, from right to left. “I am inspired by his example,” he says.
This shift to the left for the Centre in Ticino is nothing new. The Christian-social component has always played an important role in the Ticinese party. “After the first votes in the House of Representatives”, Fonio says, “I saw that, at the national level, many of my party colleagues had a similar political sensitivity to mine.”
Political issues
The issues that Fonio holds dear as a trade unionist are, undoubtedly, to do with the world of work. His home region of Mendrisio, the southernmost part of Switzerland, has long been beset by major economic difficulties and had to contend with an ever-increasing number of Italian cross-border workers.
Another question of importance to him, again linked to his geographical origin, is transport and rail connections. Fonio stresses the importance of completing the Alptransit rail link south of Lugano as well. “Until recently, I rarely travelled by train,” he admits. “But now that I use it a lot to go to Bern, I understand how important it is.”
As it happens, Fonio’s political career began in 2009 with a rail-traffic blockade. He and 100 or so others went onto the tracks to block the Cisalpino train at Chiasso station, to protest the decision to cancel the stop at the border town. They won the battle, although, Fonio adds wryly, “Mendrisio district is objectively still forgotten by the Swiss Federal Railways and federal transport policy today”.
Not just politics
Beyond family and politics, Fonio has another great passion. He is a big fan of Football Club Chiasso, which has now been relegated to the fourth division because of financial problems (he is the club’s speaker) and of Inter Milan, whose victories bring him extra satisfaction. In his ever-dwindling spare time, he is also a referee.
“People who want to help others, like Giorgio, find it hard to be as strict as they should be on the football pitch,” says Croci Torti, who knows his football.
Nonetheless, as Fonio says, “refereeing teaches you something. You have to learn to make split-second decisions and, above all, to handle criticism. Because you are there on the pitch against everyone else and you know that your decisions will not always be accepted, and sometimes you will even make the wrong decisions – just like in real life.”
Edited by Samuel Jaberg; adapted from Italian by Julia Bassam/gw
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