The autonomy of workers' organizations in pluralist democracies as a premise for growing, through collective bargaining and the spaces of participation. This was the profound sense of Mario Romani's thinking. Romani identified two phases of the affirmation of autonomy in Italy. In the 1950s, the phase of social autonomy, understood as recognition of the role of free trade union associations, within the framework of private-collective relations. Two decades later, the phase of democratic autonomy vis-à-vis mass parties and an increasingly present state in Italian society. Today, given the crisis of representation of social actors, the issue of trade union autonomy deserves attention and is still relevant. It constitutes Romani's cultural legacy to the new series of the Bollettino dell'Archivio per la storia del Movimento Sociale Cattolico in Italia (BAMSCI).