ITALY: Severe disruption expected as Italy's largest trade union calls a general strike, writes Paddy Agnew in Rome
For many Italian parents, the week got off to a bad start last Monday morning. The school delivery run ended with a nasty surprise when they discovered that a series of strikes called by different teachers' unions meant there would be few lessons, or none at all.
Not, mind you, that the week started much better for commuters into Milan, the country's business capital. One of the main traffic arteries into the city was blocked by a protest staged by workers from the Alfa Romeo factory of Arese, a factory sited close to the city's autostrada-ring road network. Down in Sicily, a similar autostrada protest staged by workers at Fiat's Termini Imerese plant was likewise causing havoc with commuter traffic into Palermo.
It might have been bad on Monday morning but it is certain to be worse tomorrow when the country's largest trade union, CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro), calls an eight-hour general strike that will badly disrupt public services, traffic and travel. Some 60 per cent of Italian trains and 275 Alitalia flights have already been cancelled in readiness for a day that will see millions of Italian workers demonstrate at 120 meetings up and down the peninsula.
When the idea for this strike was first touted by the CGIL leadership this summer, it was conceived above all as a protest against the threatened labour reforms of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government. In particular, CGIL refused to accept any change to the infamous "Article 18", a hard-won concession from the troubled '70s which guarantees job security.
Since then, of course, the socio-economic landscape has greatly hotted up. Against the background of a sluggish Italian economy (0.6 per cent growth in 2002), rising inflation, declining tax revenue and a five-year consumer confidence low, two further events have added extra turmoil to the expected drang of tomorrow's strike. Firstly, there were the government's budget proposals of two weeks ago. Announcing the strike details yesterday, CGIL's recently appointed leader Guglielmo Epifani claimed that the budget proposals (in particular a cap on capital transfers to local authorities and a public service recruitment freeze) could cost between 260,000 and 280,000 jobs. CGIL furthermore argues that the budget will have an especially negative impact on both education and health services.
As if all of that were not bad enough, right on the eve of the strike the sense of impending crisis was spectacularly underlined when ailing automobile giant Fiat, for years the flagship of Italian industry, announced 8,100 job losses as part of a restructuring plan. Given the large number of "satellite" businesses which rely almost exclusively on Fiat (especially but not only in the Turin area), those 8,100 job losses could rise to 40,000.
Union leaders and industry analysts alike fear that the proposed temporary closure of Fiat's Termini Imerese plant in Sicily could well become permanent whilst, among the long-term options for the company, many see the sale of Fiat Auto to US giant General Motors (which already has a 20 per cent stake) as inevitable.
Not for nothing will the key CGIL demonstration tomorrow take place in Turin, historic home of Fiat. Not for nothing either has CGIL organised a petition against the proposed changes to Article 18, a petition which, at the latest count, had been signed by 3.204 million members.
When the last general strike was held in April of this year (and that was the first one for 20 years), more than 10 million people were estimated to have taken part. This time, the participation is unlikely to be anything so massive and for the very good reason that, whereas the April strike had been jointly called by the three main confederated unions (CISL and UIL are the other two), tomorrow's strike has been called by CGIL alone.
In a bitter split, CGIL and the other two unions have gone their separate ways following the June "Pact For Italy" agreement with the Berlusconi government. That accord represented a major triumph for Prime Minister Berlusconi in that he "split" the unions, persuading CISL and UIL to accept a form of labour reform (Article 18 included) that CGIL categorically rejected.
That success, notwithstanding, Mr Berlusconi will find it hard to ignore the strike. The implications of the Fiat crisis (centre-right Sicilian parliamentarians have already threatened not to support the 2003 budget unless it includes measures to help Fiat workers), the poor performance of the Italian economy and the growing scepticism of the business and finance communities (both central bank governor Antonio Fazio and the Confederation of Italian Industry have expressed grave reservations about the budget) mean that he will be watching the strike closely. Mind you, so too will Italian commuters and parents.