Well, today is a big day in Italy. A big, Big Day. Today is the first general strike in Italy for twenty years. It is not, you understand, one of those quotidian, run-of-the-mill strikes.

For one thing, the trams are running. Yes! This, despite the fact that the trams are usually the first to go. Hell, they'll strike over anything, up to and including changing the brand of coffee served back at the depot. Not that I don't consider coffee to be serious issue, mind you. Actually, I'm only joking about the coffee. At least I think I am. Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me.

Note: this turned into a long entry, so I split it. If you want to skip the background, the politics and the economics of today's general strike, and would rather get straight to the actual event, my personal activities and stuff like that, skip on over to Part II now. Please also note that I don't do this type of tirade very often. Well, politics and crap like that. I do admit that I do like a good tirade now and then.

A bit of background is probably in order. The government, backed by the majority of employers in this fair land, want to reform the labor laws. What this strike is about is a change to one of the articles making it damn near impossible to fire an employee. Right now, if you are fired, you can take it to the tribunal. Fair enough. If the tribunal decides you were fired without cause, you have the right to be reinstated. That's as in, get your old job back, not just compensation. And if the employer in question has replaced you, too bad: it's got to take you back anyway.

To make things more fun, it can't get rid of your replacement, because that would be firing the replacement without cause. You may be getting the idea that "for cause" is defined exceedingly narrowly by the tribunal, and you would be right. Not being able to pay your employees, or not having enough business to keep them occupied is not cause. Not working, apparently, is not cause either. Well, actually, it might be, but the standard of proof on the employer is such that they might as well forget it. And they do. Here's an example: One school district had an alcoholic teacher they could not get rid of. The teacher would show up drunk for class, pass out at inappropriate times. (As if there is an appropriate time for a teacher to pass out during the school day.) The teacher in question eventually solved the problem by dying. During class. I read another one in the paper about a teacher who was a known pedophile. They school was so afraid they hired a female teacher to be with this guy every minute of the day. Couldn't fire him.

The result is that employers don't want to hire anybody. What if there's an economic downturn, for example, and they don't need or can't afford the extra employees? Better just to stay small. They do have one option, however: under some circumstances, they can force employees to take their pensions. Pensionable age: mid to late 40s. So, basically, employers have to get rid of those faithful employees who know what they're doing, and a good twenty years before their counterparts in other countries. Not good. The workers, on the other hand, who effectively have a job for life, have no incentive to work hard, and in some cases do not work at all.

Here's another example: A friend of mine, doing a joint business project with an Italian firm, has one member of his team who comes in to work and immediately goes to sleep. There he is, propped up in the corner or with his head down on a table, snoring away. It's permanently nap-time in this man's universe. He's an employee of the Italian firm, and cannot be fired. He is useless, and the project may fail because they need employees who actually do a bit of work to complete it.

As much as I dislike Mr. Berlusconi (and I really can't stand him, he's almost too easy to despise), I've got to admit his government has a point. The employment rate in Italy is 54%. Unemployment is, therefore, 46%. Pretty high, don't you think? On the other hand, the man and his government are assholes who pretty much deserve what they get. Last month, I wrote about the New Red Brigades claimed responsibility for killing Signor Biagi, who worked in the labor minsitry and was one of those responsible for the proposed labor reforms. I won't go into it here, in part because it makes me so furiously upset that I can't even type, but good ol' Silvio and his gov't blamed the Unions. Aside from being cruel and patently untrue-- nobody wants a return to the Years of Lead-- it was idiotic. You wanna piss off the unions, Silvio-Baby? You got it. Along with the majority of Italian voters.

And the majority of Italians are pro-union. It is cultural, and it is entrenched in the Italian psyche. And before I get too much hate mail, I myself am pro-union. Absolutely. Unions are wonderful things, they have done a lot of indispensable work in the past, and they are still needed today. That said, I do believe that they go too far, especially in Italy. It's one thing to protect your rights. It's quite another to shoot yourself in the collective foot. Almost half this country is unemployed. More than 40%. That is an apalling figure. The economy is in trouble, and is going to have a hell of a time pulling itself out, much less growing at the rate necessary to maintain the Italian standard of living. Which is, by the way, already falling. What good is a union without jobs? What will Mr. HeadoftheGreatBigUnion do when he doesn't have enough members in the union to pay enough dues to support his swanky office overlooking the swanky Villa Borghese and its green and luscious park? How will he replace his designer suits when he gets too fat for them?

The unions and their members will tell you that they are merely trying to safeguard their rights. That is good, that is what unions are there for. However, this is not a communist country. Do you really have a right to a job for life?

Obviously, they think they do. Hence the demonstrations. Hence the perpetual strikes in Italy. Striking air-traffic controllers, metro workers, tram drivers, bus drivers, postal workers, tellers, train drivers, train staff, ticket sellers, and so on, and on, and on. And the demonstrations. They've had oodles of those lately.

All over this one clause in the proposed legislation. And, if they looked past this clause, I'm pretty positive they could find more to hate.