Italy's big three unions CIGl, CISL and UIl confirmed their opposition to Italy's 2024 budget and said they would continue strike action after talks on the package with the government Tuesday.
"It confirms all the reasons for (last week's) strike because beyond listening, at the moment the government has changed nothing about the budget," said the general secretary of the CGIL, Maurizio Landini, at the end of the meeting at Premier Giorgia Meloni's office at Palazzo Chigi in Rome.
Landini said that on a controversial cut to doctors' pensions, in article 33 of the package, "they merely said that they are thinking (about rescinding it), it continues to be a wrong budget".
UIL secretary general Pierpaolo Bombardieri said "the government has confirmed the approach of the budget. Article 33, the one on pension rates, is confirmed: only on this they are evaluating possible changes".
He went on: "Once again the insensitivity to the many requests that come from the (recent) demos is confirmed.
"To the question of whether it is true or false that they are making cash on pensions, they did not answer, as we expected." The government has said it will revise the cut to doctors' pensions.
CISL chief Luigi Sbarra was more emollient after the talks saying "it was a very important meeting both in method and in merit" and calling it a "sign of respect after the demonstrations".
He confirmed that the unions had asked the government to withdraw article 33 and said they had pledged to make "changes and improvements to the norm.
"We asked to withdraw Article 33, the government assured us that there will be changes and improvements to the regulation: rates and returns of future pension treatments of doctors, nurses, staff of local authorities, kindergarten teachers should remain the current ones for old age pensions. And they are thinking in these hours of introducing improvements for the early retirement pension as well'.
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