Des Geraghty and SIPTU could learn from Italian trade unionists

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday March 20, 2003 12:56 by SIPTU Fatcat

instead of burying their heads in sand about the killers strutting through Shannon

ROME, Italian trade unions have called on their members to stage short strikes this week in a show of opposition to a U.S-led war on Iraq.

Italian port workers will go on strike
for the last hour of
their shifts to protest against the United States
using their workplaces to
ship war equipment out to the Gulf.

"We're striking against the Italian ports being
involved in the preparation
for a military operation in Iraq," the three top
shipping unions said in a
joint statement on Monday.

In the past month the United States has been moving
military vehicles from
bases around Venice to Camp Darby, its key
installation near the western
port of Livorno. The equipment is expected to take
to the seas in the next
few days.

Self-styled Italian "peace rebels" have already
squatted on train tracks and
staged sit-ins at stations to hold up the convoys
they dubbed "trains of
death".
And this week it is not just shipping workers across
the boot-shaped country
who will down tools in the name of peace.

Italy's three leading unions, who brought the
country to a standstill with
two strikes last year, have urged all their members
to stop working for 15
minutes on March 14.

"We, along with our European counterparts, want a
15-minute stoppage to
remind governments to commit themselves to peace and
to avoiding the strong
and dangerous risk of a new war in the Gulf," they
said.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been
one of Washington's
staunchest allies in the Iraq crisis, but polls show
70 percent of Italians
oppose war, even if sanctioned by the United
Nations. Last month more than
a million people took to the streets of Rome to
voice their opposition to
war plans.