New rules on the right to strike on the Italian railways

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On 22 January 1998, the Guarantee Authority for the enforcement of Italy's law on strikes in essential public services (law 146/90) issued new regulations on the right to strike on the railways, which have received criticism from some quarters.

Law 146/90 placed restrictions on the right to strike in the essential public services, entrusting to collective bargaining the definition of the minimum services to be guaranteed in the event of strikes - the so-called minimi garantiti- in order to reconcile the right to strike of the railway workers with the constitutional rights of users. The same law set up a Guarantee Authority (Commissione di Garanzia) and gave it two main tasks:

1. to assess the adequacy of agreements on minimum guaranteed services signed by the parties to ensure the provision of essential services; and

2. to impose sanctions when parties do not comply with these agreements.

If the parties fail to agree on the minimum guaranteed services, the Authority may issue regulations (called "proposals", although they are in fact binding) which apply to the sectors concerned until an agreement deemed suitable by the Authority has been reached. This happened in the railways sector, where, in the absence of an agreement between the trade unions and the State Railways (Ferrovie dello Stato Spa), the Authority issued a directive in 1991. This has now been replaced by new regulations issued by the authority on 22 January 1998.

The new proposal approved by the Guarantee Authority

In May 1997, the Authority acknowledged the inadequacy of the rules established in October 1991 to guarantee the minimum service provisions necessary in the event of strikes as set out by law 146/90, given the high level of conflict in the state railways and the particular forms that it takes (IT9707209F). On this occasion, the Authority fixed a deadline of 30 days for the parties to reach agreement. On expiry of this deadline, it was to issue its own "proposal". At the request of the parties, due to the fact that negotiations were underway, the Authority agreed to extend the deadline by a short period.

Since the State Railways and the unions had still not reached agreement, on 18 September 1997 the Authority issued a draft regulation, inviting the parties and the users' organisations to submit their observations on the text within 15 days. When this period had elapsed, and after talks with the various unions and the State Railways, the Authority decided it could postpone issue of a "proposal" no longer, and accordingly released it on 22 January 1998.

The most important points of these new regulation governing the right to strike in the railway sector are the following.

1. Strike calls must be made at least 10 days in advance and they must concern a single strike action. A new strike call can be made only after the previous strike has taken place, thereby preventing the "booking" of sets of strikes.

2. The maximum duration of a strike is 24 hours. The first strike proclaimed during a dispute may not exceed eight hours and must take place between the hours of 09.00 and 18.00 or between 21.00 and 06.00. The Authority considers that strikes longer than 24 hours are inadmissible because they would infringe the rights of users excessively.

3. If strikes already scheduled are called off, this must happen at least five days before the date set for the stoppage to begin. The aim of this rule is to restrict the "announcement effect" - ie the inconveniences to travellers caused by strikes announced and then cancelled at the last moment. Only when agreement is reached between the parties, or if there is significant progress in this direction, or if the public authorities intervene to find a solution, can strikes be withdrawn later than five days before they are due to begin.

4. At least 10 days must elapse between strikes called by the same union. Moreover, given the fact that railway transport is an integrated system, this interval must be respected even for strikes announced by different unions, when they may affect the service as a whole. The intention is to ensure that an "objective" interval of at least 10 days elapses between strikes with nationwide repercussions, whatever union has called them.

5. Given the integrated nature of the transport sector, simultaneous strikes in air, road, rail and maritime transport are not admissible.

6. A number of strike-free periods are fixed during the year. Compared with the rules established in 1991, the total number of days on which strikes cannot be called has been increased from 73 to 91. These strike-free periods comprise the times of the year when the largest number of passengers use the railways - on holidays and during political and administrative elections.

7. The minimum services to be guaranteed in the event of strikes are the following: (a) the arrival at their destinations of trains departing before the strike begins, and those which depart during the strike anyway; (b) adequate services between 06.00 and 9.00 and 18.00 to 21.00 on weekdays, the peak travelling times for commuters; (c) both on weekdays and holidays, at least three long-distance trains on the North-South and East-West routes; and (d) in order to ensure the regular movement of the guaranteed trains, an adequate number of auxiliary personnel (maintenance, information, ticket sales) must report for work.

8. If agreement is reached by the parties during negotiations over the national collective agreement, the minimum services (except arrival at destination) may be suspended if the strike is held on an official holiday. In this case the strike must be called at least 20 days previously.

The reactions to the proposal

Some of the reactions to the Authority's "proposal" have been highly critical, especially those by the autonomous unions like Comu (engine drivers), which went on strike in February, and Ucs (station masters), which called a strike on 14-15 February (that substantially did not succeed) without guaranteeing even minimum services, in reaction to the Transport Minister's order to postpone its industrial action. Most critical, however, has been Rifondazione Comunista, a party belonging to the government majority which on several occasions has taken on workers' issues - the most recent and most relevant example being its support of the 35-hour working week (IT9711216F). Ugo Boghetta, the party's transport spokesperson, in fact, called for the entire Guarantee Authority to resign, and especially its chair Gino Giugni, claiming that the Authority's directive "restricts the right to strike, guaranteed by the Constitution, to the point of cancelling it out" (quoted in the Il Corriere della Sera on 30 January 1998). Mr Giugni replied that at seven years since the previous directive, it was no longer possible to wait for the parties to reach agreement, something that they had failed to achieve since 1990. In any case, Mr Giugni added, even though the "proposal" is binding, it is flexible, and if the parties eventually reach an agreement which the Authority deems suitable, the text may be modified and additions made to it.

Commentary

By issuing its "proposal", the Guarantee Authority has sought to intervene in a particularly difficult and turbulent area. Conflict in the Italian railways sector is highly unruly because of the presence of a large number of unions, which comprise craft unions (like that of the engine drivers) and occupational unions (such as that of the station masters). It is the pattern of claims of these types of union organisation, combined with their disruptive power, that has made it necessary to introduce relatively binding regulations to ensure the provision of the essential services as required by law 146/90.

The problem of the fragmentation of representation in the state railways has also been highlighted by recent events surrounding renewal of the national agreement, when Comu withdrew from negotiations and then opposed the agreement eventually reached. It is in the event of strikes, however, that this fragmentation has its most damaging effects on the industrial relations system, because of its consequences for railway users and the mismatch between the costs and benefits of the conflict. While the costs are mainly collective, the potential advantages accruing to a craft union with high disruptive power (like that of the engine drivers, for instance) may be very great. In this situation, and in the absence of effective rules, experience has shown that sometimes the only viable way to contain the conflict is to issue an injunction. For this reason, regulation by an Authority is probably an unavoidable solution, because the fragmentation of representation actually precludes self-regulation, which remains the basic principle envisaged by law 146/90 in order to guarantee the provision of essential public services (Roberto Pedersini, Fondazione Regionale Pietro Seveso).