The strange taxi strike against the pro-taxi government

The pressure on the government despite the rules promoted to protect them. While hardship is growing in cities due to lack of means

ROME – Today you will not find taxis around. But today you will find taxi drivers around handing out leaflets to explain why you won’t find taxis around today. It’s a dog chasing its tail, otherwise known as national strike of the category. An abstention from work that brought together all the unions and acronyms except 3570, “to counteract – they say – the illegitimate use of rental authorizations and safeguard one’s own autonomy and independence from the slavery of algorithms and multinationals“. This is a somewhat surreal strike. For Assoutenti of an “absurd and unmotivated strike”, for Codacons “of a useless strike because citizens will not feel any difference compared to any other day of the week: taxis are already usually unavailable in the main Italian cities”.

In fact taxi drivers are striking against the decrees and rules that ministers Matteo Salvini and Adolfo Urso have promoted precisely to protect the category. A spin in the opposite direction. The most pro-taxi government in recent history is accused of being paradoxically against it.

The protest is a relaunch, an attacking reaction to the complaints of civil society (and of thousands of tourists who are always a little stunned by the long queues at the stations of the big cities) due to the scarcity of vehicles in an almost monopolist, a question also raised several times by the antitrust. All the government’s attempts to undermine – even if only in appearance – the status quo have ended badly: rewritten or withdrawn. Even the possibility of accumulating licenses, a rule which in theory would have favored the taxi drivers themselves. Minister Urso doubled the incentives for the purchase of new machines for license holders, but nothing. Strike. Without even the precept that Salvini imposed, for example, on railway workers.

But they insist: “Ours is not a corporate defense. We are also taking to the streets to protect users – underlines the national manager of Ugl taxi, Alessandro Genovese al Sole 24 Ore – Today users can in fact count on certified tariffs, tomorrow, without adequate implementing decrees and therefore without rules are not certain: if the demand for taxi and chauffeur services grows, the algorithms of the multinationals will skyrocket. Due to the multinationals operating in the big cities, deregulation is there for all to see”.

In short, continues USB coordinator Riccardo Cacchione, taxi drivers are not even happy with “the overall attitude of the majority. The interference that Uber has imposed on politics is nothing new, and therefore what is in all respects a stop the discussion and a rebound between different ministries requires us to go directly to a discussion with Prime Minister Meloni”. They apply pressure because they fear the “pressure” of others, with a preventive guerrilla tactic in defense of the implementing decrees “which have been blocked for 5 years now in the Ministries of Economic Development and Transport, which define the rules and constraints to protect public transport”.