A good part of Italy has stopped this Monday for the effects of a general strike in solidarity with Gaza, “against the genocide” of the Palestinian people and in support of. In addition, unemployment promoters require the Giorgia Meloni government, which does not recognize the Palestinian State, which interrupts its relations with Israel.
The strike, which has begun at midnight and will last until 23.00 on Monday, has been summoned by the Union of Base Trade Unions (USB) – which is not one of the majority plants, but which has a special presence in some sectors – and has had the support of students’ groups, both university and school, and teachers. In fact, the most significant in the demonstrations convened in 81 Italian cities, to which thousands of people have attended, has been the prominence of young people from schools and institutes, who have abandoned classes to join the mobilizations. In the Central Station of Milan there have been at noon confrontations with the police of some groups that tried to access the interior of the terminal to interrupt the trains circulation.
Unemployment has affected ports, transports – except airports, which have been out of the call -, education, health, logistics and firefighters. It follows another of four hours, also in defense of Gaza, already organized last Friday by the main Italian union, the CGIL. In the early afternoon, USB has made a first balance of the strike and has assured that “all the main ports of Italy, 90% of public transport and 50% of the railroads have been blocked.”
The 24 -hour unemployment day was inspired by the recent protests in France and its motto “Blocking everything”: in Italy it has been “we block everything with Palestine in the heart”, something that at noon had been achieved in part. The concentration held in Rome, which for the authorities has gathered 20,000 people and, according to the organizers, 100,000, has blocked at noon the accesses to the Termini station. A great chaos has originated with a multitude of travelers and tourists who intended to access the station. The same has happened at the Porta Nuova station in Turin, where 8,000 people have mobilized, according to the police. The promoters of the protest say that 50,000 people have manifested in Bologna and in Naples, 40,000.
In all the big capitals, the monitoring of the strike of transport workers has unequally paralyzed buses, trains and subway at the local level. In Rome and Naples, for example, the Metro has worked regularly and in Milan the service has been interrupted in a line. In the central station of Milan there have been delays of up to two hours in the trains. In Toscana, a group of protesters has cut the Florencia-Pisa-Livorno highway, and in Bologna, another has interrupted the traffic A-1 as it passes through the city.
The Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation, Matteo Salvini, has assured that adhesion in the railway sector is “below 7%”, and that only a high -speed train has been suspended, while regional transport has been affected by 25%. “Today’s strike is causing the cancellation of a limited number of trains. The political mobilization of extreme left unionists cannot harm millions of workers,” said the leader of the league, populist formation of ultra -right and one of the three that the Italian executive forms. For its part, USB has affirmed that the monitoring of unemployment in the teaching centers is 70%.
The incidence has been especially remarkable in the ports, where USB is stronger. The binding of base unions has also been involved in the organization of. The port of Genoa has been blocked, where Italian vessels with 200 tons of food donated by citizens, and also that of Marghera, in Venice. There are also protests in those of Livorno, Trieste, Ancona and Civitavecchia, near Rome, in addition to Ravenna, where port workers blocked a few days ago two containers who were heading to Israel.
