So we had the classic Italian compromise, a theatre of strife when all was actually agreed. Anarchy is rare in Italy, but legality is always up for renegotiation, especially if you can present yourself as hard done by, something farmers have a special vocation for. For every litre of milk, the EC guarantees European farmers about double the world market price; in return, the farmers must stay inside specific limits and not exploit the high price with overproduction. The farmers of northern Italy had vastly exceeded their EC milk quotas but did not want to pay the resulting fines. To encourage the Italian government to negotiate on their behalf, it seemed a good idea to block the trains passing through their fields.
For the next six weeks it became standard procedure to have the train stop in the middle of fields somewhere while the driver chatted to farmers and cows mooed at the passengers. The protesters put up large tents and sat at camping tables drinking from big bottles of wine while they watched us trapped on our Interregionali or Intercities. At times it was hard not to feel that train drivers, police and TV cameramen were enjoying the situation. Every evening the TV dramatised our plight and spoke of the damage to the economy while continuing to sympathise with the farmers at the expense of supposedly obscure European rules. Eventually the government caved in, as it always does, went to Brussels and got what the farmers wanted for them. What they promised in return I cannot recall, but I sincerely doubt they delivered. Italy is the most enthusiastic member of the EU and also the country most frequently condemned by the European Court for breaking EU rules. There is no contradiction. During the farmers’ protest, travellers got so used to the whole affair that they took account of the half-hour milk-quota delay when planning their journey times.
MORE OFTEN THE PEOPLE holding up the trains will be the railway workers themselves, for there is almost never a time when they do not have an ongoing dispute with their employers.
As always the situation is complicated. Work contracts are negotiated for two-or three-year periods, after which they must be renewed. The government, however, and the large employers rarely renew the contract when it’s due for renewal. Perhaps they only start negotiating at this point. So it’s common to have situations where, officially, a contract has lapsed for as many as three or four years. The workers continue to be paid at the level of the old contract, and this puts pressure on the unions to accept a lower offer than they would have wanted; otherwise their workers will get no offer at all. The unions understand this and raise their initial demands accordingly.
Throughout the long negotiation period there will be regular one-day strikes to remind the employers that the situation is urgent. The all-out strike is almost never used in Italy; it is not in line with the feeling that everything can be negotiated, that the final weapon must always be held back.
The public is told no more than that the strikes are for renewal of contract, which of course sounds more reasonable than saying that people are striking for a wage rise. Since one is rarely aware of exactly what is at stake – a feeling apparently shared by many of the railway workers themselves – the strikes take on the characteristics of an act of God, something beyond your ken. Or simply a routine annoyance. Depending on people’s political sympathies, they either support the workers unquestioningly, or speak about an Italy that will never be as ‘serious’ as France or Germany.
One says ‘strike’, but the word does not quite mean what it would elsewhere: that the trains aren’t running, and that is that. Government and unions have negotiated a minimum service to be maintained during strikes. Again there is a sort of complicity in transgression, or rather a cooperation in non-cooperation. The result is another of those ambiguous situations that Italians have such a flair for.
The strike is announced a week or two in advance, although it is also announced that it might be cancelled or postponed, or that the government could declare it illegal. There is a telephone number you can call to find out which trains are running, but it is always busy. A poster goes up in Verona station, with a list of i treni circolanti in the event of strikes, a sort of strike timetable, as if a strike day was like a Sunday or a bank holiday. But the poster includes a caveat that maybe the trains won’t be running after all.
Of course the whole thing is studied to cause maximum confusion while pretending to lessen the impact of the strike. My policy is always to go to the station and the hell with it. There’s usually something running. In fact, I can’t recall a single strike that has actually stopped me getting from Verona to Milan. It’s a line with plenty of international trains and, as we’ve seen, it’s important for the Italians to seem serious in the eyes of their French and Austrian neighbours. Most commuters take the day off, though. It’s un’assenza giustificata, a legitimate absence. So the aim of the strike is achieved anyway, and without upsetting those who really want to travel. All in all, it’s a rather elegant solution.
THE HILLS ABOVE BRESCIA are particularly gloomy. Looming mounds of grey-green vegetation scarcely cover a base of chalky limestone, giving the landscape an odd, threadbare look.
