Word: walkout
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...1970s had Italy been so gripped by labor strife and protest. From the Alps to the Mezzogiorno, Milan to Palermo, buses and trains came to a halt, airports shut down, and courts, banks and government offices closed as some 12 million workers last week staged a four-hour walkout. In the country's first general strike in three years, factory workers and police officers, teachers and students, white-collar workers and pensioners marched through city streets under banners demanding more money for health and education and less for defense...
...strike had been called by Italy's three big labor federations to protest tighter economic measures being proposed by Prime Minister Giovanni Goria's fragile five-party coalition government. But the walkout was also an attempt by the federations to reassert their muscle in the face of a series of wildcat strikes staged this fall by independent labor organizations. The COBAS (for Comitati di Base, or rank-and-file committees) have sprung up to counter the ineffectiveness of organized labor...
Although the strike was started by public-sector workers, many employees in private industry joined the protest to express their own dissatisfaction. Even Italians who were not union members expressed sympathy with the walkout. Said Enzo Montarulli, a Rome fashion designer: "The workers have turned the country into chaos with the strikes, but they're right. Too many things don't work...
...similar malaise afflicts some workers at Continental. Employees still resent the way Lorenzo busted the pilots' union during its two-year strike that ended in 1985; the walkout began when he put Continental into bankruptcy proceedings and forced workers to accept 50% pay cuts. Some employees contend that Continental too is sloppy about maintenance. In October, one pilot says, he was told to fly a jetliner with a broken radar device into an area that was being buffeted by thunderstorms. When he refused, supervisors had the balking captain switch planes with another pilot, who agreed to fly the aircraft with...
Concerned about another walkout, a group of students has petitioned the administration to prevent another strike...