1000 demonstrate in Piacenza against ban for union organizer

Around 1000 people marched through the streets of Piacenza on April 6 to protest against the exclusion notice served on Aldo Milani, national coordinator of the radical union SI-COBAS.

Submitted by StrugglesInItaly on April 10, 2013

The notice bans Milani from the city of Piacenza for three years, and came just three days before the national strike of logistics workers, which involved thousands of workers in Northern Italy, particularly in Piacenza province, where many important warehouses are located. Amongst them are the IKEA warehouse for Southern Europe, the TNT and the GLS warehouses, where struggles produced some good victories over the past year.

“Exclusion notice for the police commissioner and the prefect!” demanded the demonstrators. At the march, as well as hundreds of workers, there were some social centers, Rifondazione Comunista and a local radical left-wing network. The demonstrators pointed out the wide variation in the state and police approach in Piacenza to criminal activity in the logistics sector and to demonstrations concerning working conditions in the sector. Although the cooperative system has been shown to act criminally against workers and often to be infiltrated – when not directly controlled – by mafias, the most repressive actions are taken against workers and union organizers. And as social center CSA Vittoria points out, this is just the latest episode in a long chain of events, where workers and activists have been attacked by the police and brought to trial.

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