ROME, Oct 18: Much of Italy ground to a halt on Friday as hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets to mark a general strike protesting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s economic policies and sweeping plans to reform employment laws.

Air, rail and bus travellers faced serious delays as the national airline, Alitalia, cancelled 275 flights — around half its scheduled total — and 40 per cent of train services were cut.

The Rome metro system was shut down completely, and in the capital’s Fiumicino airport several hundred passengers were stranded, airport officials said.

Street protests closed schools, post offices and banks across Italy.

Italy’s biggest trade union, the CGIL, which called the strike, said around two million Italians took to the streets of large cities, and one worker in two — or some 10 million people — observed the strike call.

In April, 13 million Italians shut down factories, shops and businesses in the first general strike in two decades.

The latest walkout takes place in an industrial atmosphere roiled by auto manufacturer Fiat’s plans to lay off more than 8,000 workers.

The strikers are protesting a gamut of the right-wing government’s economic policies, from the reform of a law making it easier for companies to fire workers, to the draft 2003 budget.

“This is a great strike, with extraordinary turnout in all rallies,” said CGIL secretary general Guglielmo Epifani.

Epifani led the main protest march in the northern city of Turin where Fiat headquarters are located, which drew 200,000 people according to union estimates, between 25,000 and 30,000, according to police.

“We have shown that the majority in this country are not resigned to suffer a misguided industrial policy, to watch the decline of the nation,” he said.

The drop in industrial electricity consumption at 0800 GMT on Friday indicates an average participation of 58 per cent, according to CGIL officials.

Fiat, the country’s largest private employer, announced a restructuring plan last week designed to save its loss-making auto wing around 250 million euros a year, but which could entail the closure of two Fiat Auto plants, at Arese near Milan and Termini Imerese in Sicily.

Workers from the Arese factory headed up a protest in Milan that drew some 250,000 demonstrators, according to a CGIL spokeswoman.

“We want to defend the automobile industry, it is part of our national heritage,” said Milan union leader Antonio Oanzieri.

Some 85 per cent of workers in Milan have joined the strike, according to CGIL officials, with the figure reaching 100 per cent in some large private companies such as tyre manufacturer Pirelli.

In Sicily’s main city Palermo, meanwhile, wives and companions of 1,800 Fiat workers led a protest march that drew 30,000 people, according to union estimates.

In Rome, trade unions organized two separate marches that drew 150,000 people, according to a CGIL official.

Berlusconi on Friday refused to comment on the day of action, while Labour Minister Roberto Moroni played down the importance of the protests, describing the number of people taking part as “modest”.

Berlusconi and Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti have little room to manoeuvre on Fiat or anything else. Some form of state aid seems likely for Fiat, but that seems destined to prompt a series of claims from other sectors.

Epifani claims the measures contained in the 2003 budget, which cuts back on tax breaks for industry, “jeopardize between 260,000 and 280,000 employees”.—AFP