Italy: Confindustria Catania joins the stoppage, extending it to 22 October

The hauliers’’ stoppage in Sicily and Calabria between 16 and 20 October has a new development since our 8 October story: Confindustria Catania, the province’s employers’ association, unanimously decided to join in with its own stoppage — longer and broader than the one called by the union committees.

What changes

• Catania’s stoppage runs from 16 to 22 October, two days longer than the 16-20 October window already reported for the rest of Sicily and for Calabria.
• It is an employers’ decision, not a union one, so it does not appear in the official strike register kept by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (scioperi.mit.gov.it), which only records union calls.
• Confindustria Catania extends the call to non-member firms, widening the stoppage’s real reach beyond the numbers already known.

Risk of a longer stoppage

Salvatore Bella, coordinator of the Comitato Trasporto Siciliano (which called the original 16-20 October stoppage), warned on 13 October that the stoppage could drag on with no set end date (“a oltranza”) if the government in Rome does not respond to the sector’s demands — diesel above €2.40/litre and the delayed payment of the Sea Modal Shift incentive.

There is also a report, from a single secondary source with no confirmation from a primary source (the Ministry, ANSA or police authorities), of a permanent picket with trucks and tractors in the Catania area as early as 13 October. We are not publishing this as a confirmed road blockage — it stays under watch pending direct confirmation.

What to do if you have freight bound for southern Italy that week

• The scope has grown: besides the firms already identified in the earlier story, now also factor in non-member firms joining in Catania, and the chance the stoppage runs past 20 October in some areas.
• There is still no confirmed road blockage in a primary source — this is a stoppage by firms at their depots, not a road closure. If that changes, we will publish our own alert on /en/traffic.
• Always confirm with the customer and the forwarder before loading or unloading in Sicily and Calabria in this window. See also the Italy driving-bans page for the Sunday ban calendar, which remains in force in parallel.