Fewer strikes in 2025, but more local tensions: transport at the heart of the protests
According to the report by the Strike Guarantee Commission, industrial action organised by small trade unions remains widespread. There is widespread use of the ‘announcement effect’: out of approximately four strike calls, fewer than three result in an actual strike. One in three protests takes place in local public transport, as well as in rail, air and maritime transport.
Key points
The number of strikes is falling, but there remains a high level of industrial action instigated by small grassroots trade unions or arising from local disputes. There is widespread use of the ‘announcement effect’: of around four strikes announced each day, fewer than three result in an actual walkout, but when the cancellation is announced at the last minute, the disruption for the public remains. More than one in three strikes takes place in local public transport, as well as in rail, air and sea transport.
In 2025, with 1,020 work stoppages recorded, there was a 5.5% decrease compared with 2024, and an overall fall of 9.6% over the three-year period (compared with 1,129 in 2023 and 1,080 in 2024), according to the Annual Report of the Commission for the Enforcement of the Law on Strikes in Essential Public Services, presented by its chair, Paola Bellocchi, to the Chamber of Deputies. This reduction concerns not only the actual staging of strikes but also the industrial action taken in the run-up to them, although the decline in the total number of strike notices (1,564) was more modest (-5% over the three-year period) than the decline in the number of strikes actually carried out.
General strikes have doubled: from 17 to 35
The figures for general strikes bucked the trend: in this case, the number of strikes called doubled, rising from 17 in 2024 to 33 in 2025. ‘This increase, almost entirely attributable to the initiative of smaller organisations and grassroots trade unionism, resulted in 27 strikes actually taking place, concentrated over a total of nine days,’ explained Professor Bellocchi. The most recent trend is the rise of political strikes characterised by a strong transnational dimension, in which the conflict in Palestine and criticism of the so-called ‘war economy’ have emerged as powerful catalysts for cross-sectoral mobilisations.
Local tensions are fuelling the protests
The day-to-day driving force behind the protests is local conflict, fuelled by issues within individual companies or at a local level: almost 3 out of 4 strikes take place at local level, accounting for 72.5% of total walkouts, although this type of industrial action ‘appears more fluid and open to mediation, closely linked to contextual factors, with a 61% implementation rate’.
Geographically speaking, the protests are concentrated in the most densely populated areas, such as Campania, Lombardy and Sicily, with the North accounting for the highest overall proportion of regional unrest.
