By John Catalinotto
December 4, 2025

On Nov. 28 following a call by the grassroots union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), Italian workers held a 24-hour general strike that limited airline flights and train travel within Italy and disrupted work. The next day many strikers joined the mass demonstration in Rome for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

While the grassroots union raised demands on specific issues affecting the working class, including wages, hours and retirement, what gave the action more significance was its focus on political questions involving war and peace. It especially targeted Italy’s pro-Israel policies regarding Palestine while protesting NATO aggression in Ukraine and U.S. imperialism’s military threats against Venezuela.

Pickets, industrial work stoppages and demonstrations took place in 40 cities on Nov. 28. Larger rallies demanded that rightist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government end its plan for a massive armament program and big increase in the war budget.

Until recent years the grassroots union USB had only peripheral influence in the organized working class in Italy. Recently, the USB has taken a leading role mobilizing workers to protest the genocide in Gaza. Workers on the docks in Genoa and Livorno have stopped weapons headed to Israel, and the USB’s influence has grown.

This latest strike drew strong participation from railroad workers. Some 40% of the rail workers participated – in some regions 70% – according to organizers. A third of the trains were canceled or delayed as were about 30% of flights.

Strike participants underlined that their action was linked to the decline in living conditions for workers inside Italy as well as to international events. They called the fate of the Palestinian people inseparable from the expanded war economy throughout the European Union countries. The USB accused the Meloni regime of “sacrificing public services on the altar of the war economy.” (usb.it)

The biggest union in Italy is the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL). It has 5.5 million members and a long history of working-class struggle. But the CGIL has in recent decades avoided taking political or antiwar positions. It did hold one action earlier in the fall together with the USB. For Dec. 12, the CGIL is calling its own separate general strike, without raising the political issues.

International Day of Solidarity

Many of those striking joined the Nov. 29 demonstration of 100,000 people in Rome, which brought the anti-militarist message to the capital. Other protests in  Europe in solidarity with Palestine were held in Barcelona and Madrid, and in Geneva, Lisbon, London, and Paris, among others.

In Paris, 50,000 people demonstrated, according to organizers. Some 100,000 people demonstrated in Britain, including in Birmingham, Bristol, London and Manchester, with over 100 people arrested for supporting Palestine Action, a banned organization.

In the Spanish state there were pro-Palestinian demonstrations across more than 40 cities, including Barcelona and Madrid. Protesters held signs reading “Stop the genocide!” and “Total ban on arms sales to Israel” while chanting slogans such as “Free Palestine!” and “Israel is a killer!”

In Amman, Jordan, the National Forum for Supporting the Resistance and Protecting the Homeland organized a mass protest in front of Al-Husseini Mosque. Hundreds of people marched in Moroccan cities, rejecting Israeli crimes and affirming unwavering support for Palestinian liberation.

There were two support actions in the U.S. at the headquarters of the International Longshoremen’s Association in North Bergen, New Jersey, and International Longshore and Warehouse Union in California to call on these dockworker unions to support a labor blockade of military cargo to Israel.