General strike today. Buses, metro and doctors: here’s who stops

Expected parades and demonstrations throughout Italy for the strike of every public and private sector called by CGIL and UIL for today. The agitation will last eight hours for all sectors, from schools to healthcare, but has been reduced to four hours for local public transport following the order decided by the Minister of Transport, Matteo Salvini. Buses, subways and trams will therefore only stop from 9am to 1pm, as will ships and ferries. Air traffic and air traffic controllers will instead be subject to interruptions in activity from 10am to 2pm. Trains are however guaranteed as Trenitalia, Italo and Fs have already crossed arms last Sunday.

The grassroots unions Cobas, Cub and Sgb also joined the agitation. The objective, explains a note, is “to ask to change the budget maneuver, considered completely inadequate to solve the country’s problems, and to demand an increase in the purchasing power of wages and pensions and the financing of healthcare, education, public services and industrial policies”. The appeal to the TAR against the injunction was rejected.

The leader of the CGIL, Maurizio Landini accused Salvini of limiting the right to strike. “In just 2 years of government, 949 strikes have taken place in Italy. So the right to strike, yes, but also the right to work for the vast majority of Italians is the commitment I have made”, replied the minister. The injunction had been requested by the Strike Guarantee Commission in light of the “well-founded danger of serious and imminent damage to the constitutionally protected rights of the individual”.

Luigi Sbarra general secretary of the CISL, criticized both the call for the strike and the choice of injunction. “The maneuver needs to be improved especially on some aspects, but it is not a maneuver for which to organize a general strike”, stated Sbarra, “we have always looked at the strike as an instrument of last resort, a painful choice too, because it implies the failure of the negotiating moment and sacrifices for workers”. “The strike remains a trade union tool, aimed at bringing tangible results for people and not at expressing opposition to a government or a political area”, added the union leader in an interview with the National Daily.