Florence, IT / June 20, 2022 / Beatrice Graubart
Around 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 18, Marta Atonia was sitting on the train she
takes every week from Milano Centrale to Locarno when she heard the conductor announce, “I am sorry for the inconvenience. You must exit the train immediately.” As a regular Italian traveler, Atonia knew that there must be a labor strike taking place. “When there are strikes, sometimes they just decide to stop the train,” Atonia said. “There aren’t enough workers, so the trains just stop.”
The strike Atonia referred to actually occurred the day before, on Friday, June 17.
While most of the cancellations occurred on Friday, trains continued to be delayed and stopped well into the weekend. Atonia’s train, specifically, was denied entrance into the Locarno station because it left Milano Centrale almost an hour after its scheduled departure.
When asked how she knew there was a strike, Atonia said, “This is just something that happens in Italy.”
Transportation strikes occur mainly during the summer months in Italy, making the busiest months for tourists even more hectic. Lauren Baxter, a college student from the U.S. who is traveling around Italy for six weeks, said, “On the morning of the strike, I noticed that trains were getting canceled for the entire day. We had to change our train to be super early because the trains are only guaranteed to run from 6 – 9 a.m. during a strike.”
When Baxter’s train departed the Firenze station, the logistical challenges of the strike did not end there. “In the middle of a tunnel, our train suddenly came to a hard stop. The engine turned off and all the lights went out.” After a few seconds, the train restarted, but Baxter was hesitant and decided to exit the train at the next stop. “As it turns out, the train had another problem later on, and there were no workers to fix it, so it was stuck on the track and caused a major traffic jam,” Baxter said.
While the strikes typically last for one day, “the effects of the strikes are prevalent every day for about three months,” said Alicia Amantea, a security guard at the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence, Italy. For example, in the week leading up to the strike last Friday, the train companies reported mechanical issues, a failure in the electricity grid between Milan and Bologna, and a failure in the transportation communication network.
Although the strikes are inconvenient for travelers, the trade unions claim they are necessary in order to achieve better working conditions and higher pay. According to Azienda Trasporti Milanesi, the municipal public transportation company of Milan, trade unions are fighting “for the respect of the Italian Constitution and for the elimination of all health and opinion discrimination; against all forms of dismissal, for safety at work and for an inter-category minimum wage.”
From Amantea’s perspective, the reasons for the strikes are legitimate. “People who work on the trains, like mechanics and technicians, are so unhappy with their pay because it’s so low. The employees are treated so poorly,” said Amantea.
While Amantea is sympathetic to the workers on strike, the demonstrations also make it difficult for the people who work at the train stations. She said, “During the winter months, I can rest when I need to. Now, I am so tired. I can’t even go to the bathroom because I don’t have a free minute.”
With two more months left in the tourism season and several more strikes in the works, tourists, train workers, and station workers are facing a long summer ahead. To see the strike schedule for 2022, visit the Commissione Garanzia Sciopero.
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