Once
again it was the commuters who paid the price for the eight-hour strike in rail transport.
The stop from 9am to 5pm, proclaimed by the basic unions for the renewal of the contract, mainly affected regional trains from North to South of the Peninsula with "inconveniences, limitations and cancellations" while Frecce and Intercity traveled regularly throughout the day, they explained from Trenitalia.
Among the regions in which there was high support for the strike, according to Usb, there was Campania with peaks of 65% of Trenitalia and Italo workers.
In Lazio there were many cancellations of regional trains from the Rome Tiburtina station while in Lombardy traffic continued "regularly on all lines, except for a few individual cancellations", Trenord said.
Also crossing their arms were the freight transport workers and those of RFI, the company that manages the railway network and infrastructure, adhering to the acronyms USB, Cub and SGB who called the protest.
Today the same grassroots groups also organized a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the FS group in Rome to "demand a true and adequate national contract renewal".
The demands include increases of 18% on the contractual minimum, 50% on professional wages, an increase in all skills "stopped in 2003" and a 36-hour working week.
The national mobility contract for the railway activities area expired on 31 December.
While Usb, Cub and Sgb continue with the protest, the confederal unions Filt Cgil, Fit-Cisl, Uiltrasporti and Ugl Ta, together with Fast Confsal and Orsa Ferrovie, have started negotiations for the renewal of the Ccnl with Agens/Confindustria, representing the Fs group.
Today's national strike by railway workers is the second of this new year to involve the transport sector, after that of the TPL last month.
The grassroots unions always proclaim it under the slogan "salary, safety and rights".
And we can already see others on the horizon.
For example, in Lazio the USB is ready to open "a state of agitation" for the workers of Roma Tpl and consortium members who "have not yet received their salary".
Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA