Trucker Strike!!

There is officially a full blown trucker strike going on here in Italy! The 5-day strike began on Monday as a result of truckers protesting the high price of fuel. Some drivers blocked highways and roads with their trucks, while others formed convoys that deliberately slowed traffic on major highways. This is causing a crisis as no food, merchandise, gas etc. can be delivered anywhere! With more than 70 percent of Italy's merchandise delivered by truck, this is a huge problem! By this morning, almost all gas stations had run out of gas and the ones that did have gas had huge lines on people waiting (even emergency vehicles-ambulances, police cars, fire trucks-are running out of gas).

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Being that we don't have a car, we actually did not realize this was going on to be honest until today. Yesterday we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things and sure they were out of a few things but nothing to really take note of. Today we walked down to the new huge grocery store near the train station and it was empty! Almost as if they were going out of business. Reed went in and said that there was barely any food, and what was left (spinach and tomatoes were the only vegetables) was about three times as expensive at it usually is!

This is what a lot of the grocery stores look like here:


No joke! And there is still two more days of this strike to go!

There are more consequences....The pharmaceutical association is warning that there could be drug shortages if this strike continues and Fiat, the Turin-based car manufacturer temporarily closed a number of it's factories and laid off 22,000 workers because parts were not being delivered.

Only in Italy!