Strike!

On Friday we were slated to take what was scheduled to be the 5^th and final school trip of the year to Rome. One of those five trips had already been canceled due to the snow storms of February. Then, late Thursday night, we got a phone call canceling the trip for the next day. It seems that railroad workers had called a strike.

Strikes are commonplace in Italy. Unlike in the US where transportation, etc. are privately operated, huge swaths of services are covered by public workers. This includes all transportation such as trains and busses. Taxis drivers, while not public employees, are unionized and will also strike either on their own or in cooperation with other transportation unions. The school, when it goes to Rome, must travel by train – all 60+ people would fill a bus to more than overflowing. So this strike, which was confined to trains, meant we couldn’t go even though the buses were running. The intention is to inconvenience travelers to remind them of the importance of the job done by the train personnel. You don’t want to piss people off so badly that they have no sympathy for you. So, some trains were running. What it really meant was that service was not regular. You could end up on a later train than you wanted or stranded somewhere unexpected. Either situation would be unacceptable to the school as it traveled. For instance, where would you put up the entire school if they were stranded overnight in Rome and how would you find the thousands of euros to cover the unexpected expense? There is an entire website dedicated to announcements of upcoming strikes which are announced enough in advance to be able to give people time to prepare. Often strikes are cancelled or postponed which is why we were hoping to go and had to cancel at the last minute when it became obvious that the strike was on.

To be honest, Italians seem much more accepting of unions and strikes. They appear to understand that the people involved simply want fair working conditions and an opportunity to make a living. This is in contrast to the bitter anti-union sentiment being bandied about in the US. There is a particularly mean spirited sentiment against public employee unions and public employees in general – including school teachers. I feel this anger very deeply in Western Mass and, though I understand the frustration, I don’t see why people are so angry at individuals who in many cases are barely making a living.