ITALY: More than one million workers took to the streets of 120 Italian cities yesterday. They were supporting an eight-hour general strike called by the country's largest trade union, the left-wing Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro with 5.5 million members.
Boats, aircraft and trains, as well as some banks and post offices were affected by the strikes which also closed down museums, bus, tram and subway services in major cities such as Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples and Palermo.
The CGIL secretary general, Mr Guglielmo Epifani, told a key rally in Turin: "This has been a splendid strike, with a huge turnout at demonstrations up and down the country. The information we're getting from all over the country suggests that more than one million workers have taken to the streets of Italy today."
The strike was conceived this summer as a protest against the proposed labour reforms of Mr Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government.
In particular, CGIL has refused to accept any change to the infamous Article 18, a hard-won concession from the troubled 1970s which guarantees job security.
The CGIL claims, furthermore, the government's 2003 budget proposals could lead to 280,000 job losses in health, education and the public services.
A further dramatic development, the announcement last week by Italy's leading private sector company that it intends to lay off 8,100 workers from its Fiat Auto section, meant the strike took place against the background of daily regional protests at Fiat's plans. The proposed lay-offs caused the main focus of the strike to be concentrated on Turin, a city whose economy has revolved around Fiat for much of the last century.
Controversially, however, yesterday represented the first time in 40 years that CGIL has called a general strike without the participation of Italy's two other main unions, CISL and UIL, both traditionally to the right of CGIL. The unions have been bitterly split since the June "Pact-for-Italy" agreement with the Berlusconi government, when both CISL and UIL opted to accept a form of labour reform (Article 18 included) that CGIL categorically rejects.
"Nobody has even noticed the strike in Italy," said UIL leader, Mr Luigi Angeletti, adding "this strike is useless and will have no effect on the difficult economic choices facing the country."
The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Gianfranco Fini, also played down the strike's impact, calling it "entirely politically-motivated"; while a spokesman for Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party called it "useless and unreal" and urged CGIL to abandon its new-found "political vocation".
However, the Democratic Left leader, Mr Piero Fassino, who attended the Turin protest, called on the trade unions to unite and join the centre-left opposition to the Berlusconi government: "The reasons for which this strike was called by the CGIL are all related to issues which affect every citizen and worker, reasons around which it is more than possible to map out a path of trade-union unity."
Fiat in trouble: Business and Finance