ROME (ITALPRESS) – Cgil and Uil have called an 8-hour general strike, with territorial demonstrations, for Friday, Nov. 29. This was announced this morning at a press conference by the general secretaries of CGIL and UIL, Maurizio Landini and PierPaolo Bombardieri. The mobilization was called to demand changes to the budget maneuver, which is considered wholly inadequate to solve the country’s problems, and to demand an increase in the purchasing power of wages and pensions and funding for health, education, public services and industrial policies. “The reasons for the general strike are that the measures in the maneuver do not give answers to the needs of the real country, do not respond to what workers, young people and pensioners are asking of us. We have achieved the goal, which is to maintain the tax wedge, but it will not give an extra euro in January paychecks,” says Uil Secretary General PierPaolo Bombardieri. “We have been summoned by the Prime Minister next week but with a maneuver that has already been delivered to the Chambers and that has very little room for change. But if the government were to accept our proposals, we are ready to review the strike,” Bombardieri stressed, speaking of the unions’ summons to Palazzo Chigi scheduled for Nov. 5. “This day of strike the workers are paying out of their own pockets, giving up their pay to support our proposals. I have heard and read that” that of the banks “is a solidarity contribution, but from the banks there is no solidarity, they made a loan that is being paid back in two years, they have not paid and continue to pay nothing,” he added. Also speaking about safety at work, the Uil number one adds that there are “parades in the House, but deaths at work continue to increase. In this maneuver, from what we have seen, there is not one euro of investment in occupational safety issues.” According to CGIL and UIL, what is needed is tax reform under the banner of progressivity, fairness and the fight against evasion; extraordinary funding for public health care; the renewal of national public and private contracts; a full revaluation of pensions; a real industrial policy; the protection of health and safety at work and combating precarity. The general strike lacks the adherence of the Cisl, since, according to Bombardieri, “it has made a document where it says that its priorities have become results.With great respect to our colleagues in the Cisl, but on this we register that we have totally different visions. “He is echoed by the general secretary of the CGIL, Maurizio Landini: “It seems to me that the Cisl has declared that the maneuver is fine. There is a different assessment right now. The government summons us after the fact. We are calling for deep and radical changes on this maneuver, not a few amendments, starting with tax reform. There has been a political choice on the part of the government to present a Structural Budget Plan that binds the country to 7 years of public spending cuts,” Landini stressed. “This government, which plays the sovereignist, voted for the choices made in Europe. But to balance the books one can also act on revenues and not only by cutting spending.” Then a passage on Stellantis. “We continue to call for the Council Presidency to convene Stellantis directly, because we are faced with a fact: whether the mobility and production system will continue to exist in the country or not. In my opinion, there is no awareness of what is happening. Faced with a situation of this magnitude to cut resources, as the government has done, is madness, and to continue to have a company that is never convened is to take responsibility for encouraging a process of deindustrialization. We have been saying these things for more than a year,” Landini concluded. “Elkann saw the president of the Republic, we would like to understand what they said to each other, if it is not a state secret, with great institutional respect for Mattarella. But the fact that he is not a major shareholder in the group has been a known fact for years,” Bombardieri finally concludes.
– Photo xb1/Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
