Thousands of Italian public sector employees protest against the government's budget plan!
Thousands of nurses, teachers and other public sector workers in Italy walked off the job on Friday to fight the government's budget plan. The unions organized a general strike with 43 demonstrations across the country.
Protesters denounce a decline in spending power, persistently low wages and government policies that have weakened public services. They are also pushing for a more equitable distribution of profits from private companies to workers.
"These protests don't just speak to the government," Maurizio Landini, head of the CGIL union, told reporters in Bologna. "They also speak to entrepreneurs, managers and businesses, who in these years have made profits like never before."
CGIL and UIL called for an eight-hour strike against Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's latest budget, but Transport Minister Matteo Salvini imposed an order limiting the strike in the transport sector to four hours.
The strike forced ITA Airlines to cancel dozens of domestic and international flights and hit schools, hospitals and local transport.
Friday's event was the first general strike since last November. Unions faced possible sanctions for including the health care and justice sectors, which have staged strikes recently. The Italian railway, which was also the target of recent industrial action, was excluded.
Italy's health care sector has suffered staff shortages that have forced the recruitment of nurses from abroad, with the poorer southern parts of the country particularly lagging behind the more prosperous north.
"There are a lot of people going abroad because the wages are too low," said Anna Salsa, a member of the health care union UIL, at the protest in Rome. "We are forced to work double shifts to deliver minimum levels of essential care."
Demonstrators also cited continued increases in the cost of basic necessities. Despite indications that inflation is cooling, consumer protection lobby Codacons said food costs for a family of four had risen by 238 euros in 2024 compared to last year, forcing many families to cut back on their consumption.
While starting wages in Italy are in line with the rest of Europe, wage growth is not keeping pace, said Maurizio Del Conte, a labor law expert at Milan's Bocconi University. As a result, Italy's average gross salary of €35,000 a year is at the low end of the European average, well behind its G7 partners in France and Germany.
Del Conte noted that such protests are historically more influential when they engage centre-left governments, which are union-friendly, than conservative governments such as Meloni's far-right-led government.
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