ROME (Reuters) -A row between the Italian government and two of the country’s largest trade unions has erupted over a strike planned on Friday against Rome’s 2024 budget, with the transport ministry saying it will curtail the protest.
Minister Matteo Salvini will halve the duration of the national strike for public transport workers to four hours, from 9 am to 1 pm (0800-1200 GMT), his ministry said in a statement on Tuesday after he held talks with unions.
The protest by the CGIL and UIL unions is staggered across different dates and different sectors.
On Friday, they called for a strike by all workers in the central regions of Italy, and public transport and public sector employees across the country. They are planning more regional protests in the next two weeks.
Salvini acted after a national watchdog urged the unions to limit their protest to avoid too much disruption, and after the CGIL and UIL only partly complied with the request by calling the strike off for air transport workers.
Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government presented a tax-cutting budget last month that according to unions fails to address the country’s main challenges and is aimed mainly at pleasing Meloni’s grassroots voters.
CGIL leader Maurizio Landini called it “an electoral budget” in an interview with Corriere della Sera newspaper, saying Italy needed more investment in sectors such as education, health and industry.
Meloni’s right-wing coalition government took office last year after a landslide victory, but is gearing up for a new election campaign as Italians prepare to vote for the European Parliament in June 2024.
Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister and leader of the coalition League party, said before announcing the curbs he would not allow the unions “to hold the country hostage” for the entire day.
“I will not cancel the right to strike but you cannot stop Italy at such a sensitive time for the economy,” he said, after the League accused trade unions of holding the strike on a Friday so that they could have “a long weekend”.
Opposition parties have sided with the unions and renewed their criticism against the budget.
“Meloni is humiliating workers,” said Elly Schlein, the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party.
(Reporting by Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini, editing by Gavin Jones, Bernadette Baum and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
