Telecom Italia workers strike over restructuring plan

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2006

ROME (AFP) — Employees of Telecom Italia staged a strike and protest to oppose the company's plan to hive off its mobile phone unit. About 1,000 workers held a demonstration in northern Milan, where the debt-laden group's outgoing chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera drew harsh criticism, an AFP photographer at the scene reported.

"Tronchetti Provera, you'll be in jail soon," the protesters shouted, in reference to a scandal involving illegal wiretapping that landed a former security official in prison two weeks ago. An official of the left-wing CGIL union said some 80 percent of the company's 63,000 employees observed the strike. Tronchetti Provera came under attack after proposing last month that Telecom Italia create two separate entities for its mobile phone business and...