Berlusconi shrugs off first big strike

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi shrugged off his first big strike since coming to power five months ago despite teachers, transport workers and other public-sector employees protesting yesterday over plans to cut pay and jobs.

Welfare Minister Maurizio Sacconi said the strike would have "particularly low" participation while also announcing plans to reform labour laws to "regulate" strikes, by obliging unions to poll members before staging any industrial action.

Thousands of teachers and schoolchildren protested in Rome, Milan and other cities against the otherwise popular Mr Berlusconi government's education reforms, which include plans to chop 87,000 teachers' posts over the next three years to save money.

Buses, trains, trams and ferries came to a halt between the morning and evening rush hours as workers protested over pay and contracts, as did some health and emergency service workers.

"There are too many cuts, they are making reforms that we don't like, especially in the schools and we all have children at school and it affects everyone," said Rome commuter Adriana Renza, trying to make it to work despite the bus strike.

Mr Berlusconi's popularity rating is over 60 per cent in some polls, mainly thanks to his success in cleaning up the Naples rubbish crisis, saving Alitalia from bankruptcy and cracking down on illegal immigrants and crime, even mobilising troops.

But one union leader, Pierpaolo Leonardi of the CUB, said yesterday's strike was "the best opinion poll as it corrects the idea that this government still has a broad consensus".

Mr Berlusconi tried to upstage the biggest protest since he took power by vowing, in comments to his brother's newspaper Il Giornale, to tackle Italy's most notorious problem - the Mafia.

"It's time for a hard and bitter fight against the Mafia, the Camorra and the 'Ndrangheta. We need to free the south from crime," he said in yesterday's edition, referring to the crime syndicates that hold sway over Sicily, Naples and Calabria.

Despite some spectacular godfather arrests in recent years, the mob makes so much money out of drugs, protection rackets and public contracts that the business of the 'Ndrangheta alone is estimated to be equivalent to three per cent of Italy's output.