It will also be true (and this time it is) that the taxi drivers had announced for some time (i.e. from 6 October) that, in the event of the wreck of the negotiations with the Government on the rules of the sector, the national strike of the white cars would be triggered on 21 November for the whole day, but the citizens who remembered them raise their hands. Few, very few, almost none. In this case, the legitimacy of the strike is not in question, even if in essential public services it would be necessary to tread carefully, but the lack of communication, which is evident. It is no coincidence that yesterday and the day before yesterday in the main national newspapers there was not even a short article recalling the taxi strike and that no union press release arrived in the editorial offices of many sites.
To say that the communication on the national strike of taxi drivers on 21 November was blatantly insufficient is an understatement and to point out that once again the users who did not find a taxi that was one in Rome or Milan were at the expense of it is unfortunately a obviousness. But whose fault is it? Certainly taxi drivers, but not only them. It is not clear why the drivers of the white cars gave so little publicity to their struggle on the eve of the crucial meeting with the Government: the absence of preventive information in the hours immediately preceding the agitation would have emphasized the strike itself and its motivations and would reduce customer inconvenience. But the responsibility - this must be recognized - is not only of the trade union but also and above all of the Municipalities which were responsible for informing the citizens in time, which, with rare exceptions, they did not do.
Beyond the merits of the dispute between taxi drivers and the Government, to which we will have to return, however, the occasion is good to once again highlight not only the often reprehensible forms of union struggle in public services but the opportunism that on this terrain demonstrates the political class, local and national, with very rare exceptions. The responsibilities of the municipal administrations have also been mentioned on the occasion of the taxi drivers' strike, but do we want to talk about the failures of Parliament and of all political forces, with few exceptions?
The taxi drivers' strike is striking because it was nationwide and lasted an entire day, but what about the strikes announced by hyper-corporate and almost non-existent trade unions that punctually bring trams, buses and the subway to their knees almost every Friday? And what about the threat from the doctors' union (Snami) to block the medical guard in Milan for four days on the nearby Sant'Ambrogio bridge? This is not a legitimate exercise of the right to strike but a permanent provocation to the weakest sections of the population. There has been talk for years about the urgency of regulating strikes in essential public services but the dish is crying.
Appropriately, the Government had left this very delicate matter of constitutional importance in the hands of Parliament, but not to do nothing about it. Pd senator Pietro Ichino presented a bill on the matter some time ago and the president of the Chamber Labor Commission, the centrist Maurizio Sacconi, tried to stir things up and proved to be much more sensitive than his colleague in the Chamber. the former minister Cesare Damiano (Pd) who has never taken a step that could even remotely disturb the sleep of the trade unions and above all of the CGIL. But what have Northern League and Grillini members done in this field? Nothing at all.
However, the question is simple: also in terms of strikes in public services, do the interests of citizens come first or those of lobbies and corporations?
All this must be remembered in the forthcoming electoral campaign.
