Reggio Emilia, 13 June 2024 – Neither time to urgently ask for a discussion with the city leaders, and the unions find themselves having to deal with yet another attack against a Seta driver by a passenger.
Stefano (not his real name) is 32 years old and around midday yesterday he was working on line 2, heading towards via Curie. “After stopping at the station – he says – I was proceeding towards Piazzale Tricolore when a non-EU citizen approached. He began to complain about the fact that no buses had passed for hours, asking me why. He was very agitated and not very lucid. I told him that it seemed impossible to me and that in any case he could, if he wanted, make a report to the company. I told him I was working and at that moment I didn’t know how to help him.
“We arrive at the traffic light and we are stopped, at that point he freaked out. She insisted, started punching the dashboard, tried to open the door. She grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me.”
The situation was degenerating. “I immediately called the police – he continues – within half an hour the officers arrived, but in the meantime he had already come down. He hadn’t gone far, he stayed nearby, and while he left he even broke my mirror. In all of this, however, I was stopped at the intersection in traffic, so I set off again and along Via Emilia I pulled over to adjust the mirror as best I could. I don’t know yet if I will submit an internal report to the company, but I’ll definitely do something. This has never happened to me before, at most just a few discussions, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Similar things have already happened to many colleagues.”
In the meantime the officers took the passenger to the police station: a well-known regular in the station area and a drug addict, he said he was going to Sert. The man, a 30-year-old of Tunisian origin, was reported for damage. It is the third episode in a week: last Thursday a driver was the victim of an ambush by a passenger with whom she had argued on board, on Friday a driver was verbally attacked and threatened by a group of kids. The unions, already on a war footing, do not retreat one meter.
«On the front of the growing episodes of attacks against local public transport operators, the undersigned local trade union organizations are requesting an urgent meeting in order to share the actions to be implemented in the shortest possible time and to protect the health and safety of workers “, is the text of the letter sent today by Filt-Cgil, Fit-Cisl, Uilt, Faisa Cisl and Ugl Fna to Seta, the Prefecture, the Mobility Agency and the Municipality, in the hope of addressing the problem of safety on board public transport. A situation that is no longer sustainable, reported on several occasions but which has not yet reached a turning point.
