ITALY
Millions walk out in general strike
By John Catalinotto
On Oct. 18, for the second time in six months, millions of
Italian workers held a one-day general strike, accompanied by
mass demonstrations throughout the country.
The issue was government policy. Workers are facing a change
in the labor law that would remove job protection under the
hard-won 1970 law called Article18.
The workers were also protesting budget cuts that the CGIL
union confederation says will cost up to 280,000 jobs.
The strike brought much commuter transportation to a halt.
It tangled regional and air traffic. In many places high school
and university students joined workers for mass
demonstrations.
Among the bigger actions were a march of 200,000 in the
northern industrial city of Turin, home of the FIAT automaker;
100,000 in Milan; the same number in Rome: and 40,000 each in
Venice and Florence.
Some 50,000 people-- the biggest such demonstration since
1945--came out in Palermo, Sicily, to protest the planned
closing of the local FIAT plant. Somewhere between 1 million
and 2 million people demonstrated throughout the country.
Although the two smaller labor union federations, the CISL
and the UIL, did not join this strike as they had in April, it
was still an enormous job action. The CISL and UIL had reached
an agreement with the government in the summer, agreeing to
give up job protections after some minor concessions by the
regime.
Many placards targeted Italy's right-wing premier and media
magnate Silvio Berlusconi. He was pictured as a long-nosed
Pinocchio because of his propensity to lie to the Italian
workers.
Berlusconi's rightist coalition, which includes the Northern
League as well as National Alliance, the successor to
Mussolini's fascist party, had won the Spring 2001 elections
against a center-left coalition. This latter group, the Olive
Tree, had led Italy into NATO's war on Yugoslavia and was
overseeing a declining capitalist economy that has continued to
decline under the billionaire premier.
Berlusconi has adopted a foreign policy that can only be
described as servile to U.S. imperialism. Despite this
willingness to push Italy into U.S.-led wars, Bush has yet to
invite the Italian premier into the inner imperialist
circle.
Besides protesting the elimination of Article 18, the strike
and demonstrations protested the government budget, its attack
on workers' rights and the drive toward war.
Observers in the area around Venice reported that one of the
most shouted slogans was, "No war in Iraq," and that many
placards and banners, including those brought by individuals,
called for solidarity with the Iraqi people against the U.S.
war.
Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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