Rome transport strike sparks protests

(ANSA) - Rome, April 17 - A strike by subway and bus staff snarled traffic and disrupted business in Rome Friday, sparking protests by hundreds of irate passengers who refused to leave a train when the driver walked off the job, witnesses said.
    City authorities removed the electronic gate banning traffic to the centre to allow workers to use their cars to reach workplaces but thousands of people found themselves stranded in buses and underground trains that ground to a halt at the climax of stoppage, which called by labour unions to protest new rules against staff absenteeism imposed by the ATAC transport company.
    Private security guards and police had to intervene to restore order when hundreds of passengers refused to get out of carriages in one train that stopped at the Arco da Travertino metro station.
    Station loudspeakers urged passengers to leave the train and evacuate the station while videos placed on line by the Codacons consumer protection pressure group showed hundreds of commuters waiting in front of trains in stations with doors closed.
    Passengers also openly cursed drivers in the few buses that remained in service. "We are like sardines, except that the fish are wider," quipped one commuter in a Codacons video.
    Two station agents were taken to hospital as a result of being "assaulted and beaten by passengers" in clashes in the Arco di Travertino and Re di Roma stations on the A line, said Gianluca Donati, secretary of mobility for the Rome and Lazio transport division of labor union CISL.
    Donati pointed the finger at "bad management" by ATAC as the reason for the chaos.
    "They (ATAC) ordered the evacuation of the trains to close the line (at 8:30 am). Management should have ordered the driver to finish the route. The drivers act upon orders given to them by the control center," Donati said.
    Consumer protection group Adoc called for the Italian Transport Authority to intervene in what it called "the umpteenth black Friday for mobility for Romans, the umpteenth time for scenes of panic, chaos and disorder in the metro A and C stations and on buses in outlying areas of the city".
    Adoc President Lamberto Santini called Friday's protest to the strikes "proof of the failure of the Roman public transport system", and the group called on the Transport Authority to provide an "immediate plan for renovation of the capital's public transport system".
    Valentina Iori, secretary of the bus and tram workers' union Ugl for Rome-Lazio said "there is widespread and general discontent with ATAC management," claiming that the strike call was widely supported throughout the capital.
    Among the main causes of the strike was clauses of a contract signed June 27 that means workers' pay would be deducted for absenteeism including for sickness, parental leave, sick children and blood donations -- a measure that so far has been applied only to clerks and ticket controllers but is due to be extended to drivers, guards and other workers, Iori said.