Strike by professors and exams blocked for the September session in 79 Italian universities. A total of 5.444 workers will stop, including university researchers and researchers from research institutions. The mobilization was called to denounce the five-year freeze on wage increases, the only public category to which this restriction continues to be applied without any adjustments.
The strike concerns the autumn session, which runs from 28 August to 31 October and refers to the 2016-2017 academic year. In order not to harm the students, the protest will last a maximum of 24 hours, thus canceling only one of the three appeals of the session. In universities where there is only one scheduled session, this will in any case be guaranteed. Nothing changes, however, for the graduation sessions and not even for the admission test to Medicine or other courses with a limited number of students.
Behind the teachers, who have not been on strike for 40 years, there is no union, but "The Movement for the Dignity of University Teaching", a spontaneous promoting committee of researchers and professors created a few months ago. In the early summer, the Movement wrote an open letter explaining the need to protest and inviting colleagues to join the mobilization.
