Rome was snarled by a transport
strike and student protests against school reforms Friday, with
traffic building up and the few buses available stormed by
desperate commuters.
The head of the national strike watchdog said that citizens
of the Italian capital had become "hostages" to strike action by
transport unions.
Friday's strike by the small grassroots USB union led to
much greater disruption than expected.
Both the A and B metro lines were closed as well as the
line from Rome to Rome Lido.
USB said some 60% of drivers had walked off the job, but
Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli said the number was 30%,
representing 69 metro drivers.
Some passengers at the busy Metro B Piramide station began
pressing against the closed station gates, trying to open them,
and upon finding them closed began hurling insults.
A doctor at the Policlinico Hospital said she left work at
7 p.m. on Thursday and after not seeing any more signs
announcing the planned strike, assumed that it was no longer
taking place.
"This morning I left calmly, knowing there wasn't a strike.
Now I don't know what to do," the doctor said.
Roberto Alesse, president of the government's Strike
Guarantee Commission, said citizens are at risk of being held
hostage by the system, and that the law on strikes needs to be
updated.
"The sacrificial victims of a system that doesn't work are
the citizens who use it, true and real hostages of the myriad of
strikes proclaimed in essential public service sectors," Alesse
said.
Between January 1, 2015 and September 15, 1,561 strikes
were declared in essential public service sectors, constituting
a 7.5% increase on 2014 figures, a year that itself saw an
increase of 6%, to 1,055 strikes, Alesse said.
Rome residents have been hit by an average of two
local-transport strikes a month this year, the head of the
national strike watchdog said.
In 2015, said Alesse, there have been 16 strikes so
far this year.
Alesse added that "we have seen another day of serious
disruption for Roman citzens, who are hostage to a system of
public transport that is on the verge of collapsing".
In the rest of the country transport strikes were up 40%
this year, he said.
Transport Minister Graziano Delrio said Italian citizens
shouldn't have to pay the consequences of the seemingly endless
spate of public-sector strikes.
"More responsibility is needed on the part of all, and we
have to make sure that citizens aren't penalised," he said.
The minister said efforts had to be made to "return to a
normal dialogue" with trade unions "for the renewal of contracts
while respecting citizens".
Traffic in Rome on Friday was further halted by students
protesting the government's school reforms.
A few hundred high school students held a march across part
of downtown Rome to the Ministry of Education, where they staged
a protest against the government's recently approved "Good
School" reform.
Protest leaders said they were demonstrating against
aspects of the reform that they believe favor private schools
over public schools and give public school headmasters more
powers, as well as a program allowing for alternating school and
work under which they said "we'll be forced to work with out
pay, exploited".
The students were accompanied by police during a nearly
two-kilometre march that took them across the Tiber River.
Protest leaders said they were self-organized and separate
from a UDS student union demonstration scheduled for October 9.
The group held a banner reading: "We're not asking for the
future, we're taking the present. #nohighcostofliving #nojobsact
#nogoodschool".
"We want our schools public, secular, and united," a
protest leader said.
When the march reached the Ministry of Education, police
dressed in riot gear were on hand as some of the protesters
threw smoke bombs and paint balls filled with orange paint onto
the steps of the ministry building.
Four students allegedly involved were later identified,
Rome police said, while they are still working on identifying
others involved.
Further north in Pisa, a few dozen students also protested
against the reform, throwing eggs at the Pisa provincial
government building as well as the provincial headquarters of
Premier Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD).
In Turin, about 150 students protested the school reform,
marching downtown and causing some traffic disruption.
In that demonstration, students lit smoke bombs and hung
anti-Renzi posters on the windows of a bookstore.
The Rome traffic snarls caused several accidents and
combined with heavy rains and wind on Friday in the capital that
resulted in a tree falling on some parked cars on the outskirts
of the city.
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