On Tuesday 6 September, thousands of workers took the streets in the main cities of Italy in a general strike, organised by the CGIL union confederation, to protest a package of ever-changing austerity measures as well as against proposed changes in the labour legislation. Observers signalled that the strike placed mounting pressure on the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to act “swiftly and decisively” – as the country’s President Giorgio Napolitano phrased it. Addressing an estimated 70,000 people in Rome, Susanna Camusso, CGIL’s General Secretary, called the changes to the labour law “unjust” and threatened more strike actions if they were not removed.
English: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/world/europe/07italy ...
This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.