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By Ana Vračar / Peoples Dispatch
Italy is on general strike for the third time in less than three months, following a call by the grassroots union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB). Pickets, industrial actions, and demonstrations were organized in over 40 cities, with massive rallies demanding an end to rearmament plans and the war budget shaped by Giorgia Meloni’s government.
On Friday, workers stressed that their mobilization is tied both to worsening material conditions at home and to international events, specifically the struggle of the Palestinian people – whose fate, they insist, is inseparable from Europe’s expanding war economy. As a result, those striking today reiterated their commitment to join the national march for Palestine in Rome, taking place on Saturday, November 29.
“The Meloni government’s rearmament budget is in line with the warmongering policies pursued in recent years, but it also represents a further leap in quality, with public services being sacrificed on the altar of the war economy, all while inflation continues to rise and wages have been stagnant for decades,” USB and the dockworkers’ collective CALP wrote in one of the strike calls.
“We want at least €2,000 in base pay, retirement no later than 62, an end to subcontracting, reduced working hours with no loss of pay, guaranteed housing rights, new public-sector hiring, and free, universal public health care,” USB added. “These are urgent needs in an exhausted country, needs that are incompatible with the government’s warmongering.”
Italy’s social situation is “a political choice,” workers say
Like other European governments, Meloni’s administration has aligned itself with the European Union’s armament agenda. According to trade unions, this will mean billions for the military and related industries while essential public services fall apart. CALP described the new budget as one that freezes wages, ignores inflation, and prioritizes banks and capital gains. “While prices keep rising, salaries stay stagnant and pensions are cut every year,” the collective stated. “We work more, earn less, and live worse. This isn’t a crisis: it’s a political choice, and workers are the ones paying for it.”
Calls for the government’s dismissal could be heard across today’s actions, together with refusals to accept the shift toward militarization and military enrollment. Groups including left party Potere al Popolo and student collectives CAU and Cambiare Rotta marched with striking workers, blocking roads and picketing companies set to profit from military budgets while healthcare and education are left underfunded.
Messages of support arrived from abroad as well. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and Freedom Flotilla participants Greta Thunberg and Thiago Ávila announced they would join the 28-29 November mobilizations in person. Artists including Roger Waters, as well as international trade unions and Palestine solidarity coalitions, expressed solidarity with the strike. “USB’s strikes have shed a bright light on the shameful complicity of the Italian government and Italian corporations in enabling Israel’s genocide, illegal occupation and apartheid against Palestinians,” the BDS National Committee wrote. “They have shown the power of the people and inspired many across the globe.”
In a letter to USB, the Galician Unions Confederacy (CIG) emphasized the strike’s relevance in the context of the EU’s ReArm Europe strategy and the rise of the far right. “We reject the policies promoted by the EU and its member states, which fuel a warmongering escalation and commit to increasing military budgets at the expense of public services and social support,” CIG stated. “And we are concerned about the fascist drift toward which Europe is heading, of which the Meloni government is a clear example.”
Unlike the general strike in October, in which the confederation CGIL joined USB’s call in a rare moment of unity, the call for today’s action came from grassroots unions alone, with CGIL planning its own strike in mid-December. This, however, did not diminish USB’s determination. “Calling the third general strike in just over two months is not a decision to be taken lightly or symbolically,” they wrote.
Instead, they reiterated that today’s strike was intended to table concrete demands and alternatives. The strike, USB added, should not be perceived as a one-off protest but as “an event that represents not only a stage of mobilization, but also a decisive political step to give a voice to those who can’t make ends meet, those working for starvation wages, and those watching their futures crushed by wars, inequality, and the choices of a government hostile to workers.”
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Ana Vračar
Ana Vračar is an author at Peoples Dispatch.
