Just the other day I was telling a friend that I was shocked by the fact that I have been living in Italy for about a month and there has not been a transportation strike. I have dealt with many transportation strikes in my prior trips to Europe, and was pleasantly surprised there had not been one this time. I spoke too soon. On Wednesday night the whole class got an e mail from our professor that there were planned transportation strikes for Friday, our last day of class. Being stuck on an island, the lot of us started to semi-freak out. We realized that Friday would be one of our last days in Italy and we really did not want to be stuck on San Servolo. I know I personally wanted to go out, shop, see the sights and have one last romp around Venice. Little by little we learned conflicting details about the strike(surprise surprise no one knew what was going on haha). First the strike was going to be Thursday. Then there were going to be vaparettos running to san servolo only during rush hours. Next it was that ‘what a strike?’. Then we found out the vaparetto strike was going to be for Friday. Finally we found out San servolo is an essential line and they cannot cut off access to it, so the lines between San Servolo and San Marco would still run, but at what times we did not know. Finally, after many e-mails and much effort from our wonderful professors and helpful people and VIU, that the vaparettos would run as normal to and from San Servolo. This was extremely joyful news. While I am familiar with transportation strikes in Europe (not the law behind them, but the fact that they are planned and only usually for 24 hours) many of my classmates had never experienced this and were confused by this phenomenon. Luckily, on our last day of our comparative and International Labor and Employment Law course, Professor Goldberg had arranged for an Italian labor law lawyer to come in and talk to us about labor law issues in Italy. While it took him two hours to go twenty kilometers because of the strikes, he did make it and gave a great talk on many of the aspects of international labor and employment law that we had discussed and how they applied in Italy. He was a great insight into how different legal systems, especially those with a different view of unions, deal with labor problems. He explained how the strikes have to be planned and are a major tool in the negotiation process. He also explained how every employee is bound to minimum standards for the genre of work they do and this is why there is lot of tension in negotiations. He also assured us that the strike would only be for Friday and that we would be able to use all vaparettos on Saturday to fully enjoy our last day in Venice. This was valuable insight and I thank Professor Goldberg the opportunity to get a better understanding of how these laws work in practice.
~Megan