New train, bus and metro strike on Friday 13 December. Salvini summons unions

Next Friday, the feast of Saint Lucy, a new 24-hour national strike is scheduled in the public and private sectors involving trains, metro, buses, taxis and maritime transport: excluded is the airline sector, which will protest on 15 December. Proclaiming the agitation this time is the basic trade union Usb and also joined by Fi-si and Usb Lavoro Privato. The general strike of 29 November was called by the CGIL and UIL. "The condition of transport workers mirrors the general condition of workers, wages that have been below the cost of living for 30 years, gruelling work shifts, extensive use of precariousness and contracts, and a huge wound called health and safety," Usb attacks, justifying the strike and denouncing, therefore, national contracts "signed at the bottom, with inadequate increases and blatant worsening of working conditions.

The Minister of Infrastructure, Matteo Salvini, has convened the trade unions tomorrow, 10 December, at 2pm at the Mit. This was announced by the ministry. ''The objective is to confront with the organisations that have announced abstentions from work on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 December to invite them to desist,'' the Mit explains.

In detail, trains will stop from 21:00 on Thursday 12 December to 21:00 on Friday 13, the metro, bus and tram will also stop during the same 24 hours, but with different modalities and times from city to city and with guaranteed time slots. The seafarers will cross their arms from 00:01 to 23:59 on Friday 13, as will the taxis, although it is not certain whether all white cars will join the protest.

But looming over the 24-hour strike is the spectre of preceptorship in the transport sector. In fact, the announcement of the new protest has particularly irritated the deputy prime minister and minister of transport, Matteo Salvini, who this week threatened to halt the 24-hour strikes in the transport sector planned for December. "The next general strike has been proclaimed by some autonomous unions, also on a Friday. It is the penultimate Friday before Christmas, I give the Italians my word that I will do everything to limit the inconvenience to a minimum, for those who want to have a peaceful month of December,' the minister said. "The right to strike will be guaranteed but not 24 hours, not in the face of everyone and everything because they are exaggerating," Salvini stressed.

The Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, also commented on strikes a few days ago. 'The exercise of the right to strike is one of the noblest institutions of democratic orders' but 'it should not be abused', he said. In the coming hours it will be seen what decision Salvini will take in the long-standing tug-of-war with the unions. In the 29 November strike he had intervened with the precept, reducing the stop for local public transport, air transport and maritime transport to four hours, while rail transport had been excluded from the general strike. Cgil and Uil had then appealed to the TAR against the pre-emption, but the administrative court rejected their appeal, to the 'great satisfaction' of Salvini.