Commuters in Emilia-Romagna faced significant delays on Monday as staff of Trenitalia and network operator RFI staged an eight-hour regional strike from 09:01 to 17:00. The walk-out, affecting Bologna Centrale, Reggio Emilia AV Mediopadana, Rimini and other key stations, led to the cancellation of about 60 percent of regional services despite minimum-service guarantees. Travel news outlet The Local reported that business travellers heading to Bologna’s biomedical and packaging clusters missed morning meetings, while tourists heading to the Adriatic coast scrambled for replacement buses. Long-distance Frecciarossa services were less affected but some experienced knock-on delays as rolling stock was out of position. Unions Filt-CGIL, Fit-CISL, Uiltrasporti and ORSA complain of chronic understaffing and insufficient security staffing on evening services. Trenitalia counters that it has hired 900 conductors this year and that negotiations on a new regional labour contract are ongoing. A new bargaining session is scheduled for 24 September; if no deal is reached, unions may escalate to a 24-hour strike in mid-October. Companies with operations in Bologna’s Fiera district and Modena’s Motor Valley are advising employees to work remotely or rent cars until the industrial climate stabilises. The regional government has requested that Trenitalia provide real-time disruption data to its mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) pilot so passengers can re-plan on the fly.
Source: The Local Italy
