Italian Prime Minister Tries to Defuse General Strike

May 21 (LPAC)--Prime minister Prodi intervened to try to defuse the threat of a general strike, evolving mainly from the ongoing confrontation between Finance Minister Tommaso Padoa Schioppa and the trade unions over the national contract of public workers and the pension reform. Schioppa, a former European central banker, is a fundamentalist accountant whose ideological strings are pulled by international financial centers. Ignoring the persistent increase of poverty levels in the Italian population, he has rigidly opposed union demands for wage increases compensating the loss of purchasing power, and a softening of the recent pension reform which increases retiring age in one shot.

On Sunday, after trade unions had threatened a strike of public sector workers in the first week of June, Prime Minister Prodi intervened. He had a meeting with Schioppa and announced that he would take the issue into his own hands. As a first result, he advanced a proposal for a wage increase for public workers.

If a strike of the public sector workers is announced, it is possible that it will be transformed into a general strike, as metalworkers and other union sectors have already threatened. A general strike would be a death blow for the government, anticipating an early end which is otherwise forecasted by many for sometime in the next 12 months. The Italian scenario fits into the new ungovernability scenario for Europe inaugurated with the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Frau Angela Merkel's suicide course with Russia.