Minister Del Rio, interviewed by the "Messaggero" on April 30, declared that decisions such as a transport strike in a city must obtain the consent of the majority of workers, as has been the case for some time in Germany. Fully acceptable considerations because in public services the nature of the conflict goes beyond a limited confrontation between the employer (most often a public entity or in any case subject to public discipline) and the workers concerned, since it produces negative side effects on the entire community, especially the weakest groups. It is no coincidence that a wise tradition would like the union to explain clearly to the citizens, apologizing for the inconvenience, the reasons for the protest.
This is also to put indirect pressure on public opinion, on politics and on the administrators who would in any case be responsible for the correct management of companies. The strikes in public services they must follow specific procedures, which are shared with the trade union organisations. These rules (ranging from cooling procedures to guaranteed time slots, from essential minimum services to actual moratorium periods. But, being the right to strike de facto recognized not only to trade union organizations but also to individual workers and in the presence of a pathological fragmentation of representation, "regulation" (albeit accepted by the vast majority of trade union organizations) does not always give the desired results.Inevitably, precepting proves to be more effective in emergency situations.
To correct the existing contradictions it is necessary to untie the knot of the nature of the right to strike. Is it a subjective right, absolutely protected, or rather an individual right that must be exercised collectively, presupposing the search for consent by those who hold it to exercise this right together? Where there is strong conflictual pluralism there is one more reason to have the majority of the workers concerned decide the strike through a referendum. Just as it is undisputed that the majority of workers decide whether to accept or reject a hypothesis of contractual agreement. Unfortunately, in the presence of authoritative and fierce defenders of the principle of the strike as a "constitutionally protected" individual right, we will have to resign ourselves to the repetition of the recent events of urban transport in metropolitan cities. The goal of (courageous) change that Minister Del Rio seems to set himself is a far more demanding challenge than that of article 18.
