Strike makes trains run on time

THE ITALIAN state railways had strange advice for their passengers this weekend. Take the bus. Or rent a car. Anything, as long as it didn't involve using one of their services. "Please don't take the train," a company statement pleaded on Saturday. "We advise you, if possible, to put off any journey you were planning to take with us."

The Italian railways are well known for their lack of punctuality, their vulnerability to strikes and cancellations, their extravagant ability to lose money and even, in recent months, their embarrassing record of breakdowns and derailments. But nothing has ever led them to tell passengers to stay away.

The reason for this act of fatalism was the threat of a rogue 24-hour strike by station-masters. Nothing strange in that, you might think, since one group of railway workers or another is nearly always contemplating industrial action and creating havoc on the lines.

Usually, management is confident of running at least a reasonable percentage of scheduled trains. In theory, a skeleton service is guaranteed by a legally binding agreement between management and the unions.

But in this case the station-masters refused to listen to reason and were even threatening to ignore an injunction slapped on them by the Transport Minister, Claudio Burlando, ordering them to postpone the protest over their contracts.

But the trains ended up running after all. Barely 5 per cent of them were disrupted as the strike collapsed in the first few hours. Managers frantically sought to take back their warning, but it had been so effective that it was too late. "My train ran on time. More punctually than usual, in fact," reported one passenger. "The only thing was, it was nearly empty."