The Big Sting

After 36 governments in 31 years, Italians are understandably skeptical about the urgency of Cabinet changes.

But when a political crisis coincides with an economic crisis, reports TIME'S Rome Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante, indifference disappears. Last week President Giovanni Leone undertook ritualistic consultations toward the formation of a government to succeed the fallen center-left coalition of Premier Mariano Rumor.

Leone, as a starting point, requested Senate President Giovanni Spagnolli to determine whether a new center-left coalition could be organized under another Premier. At the same time, Fiat, the flywheel of Italy's long-running economic miracle, ordered a three-day week for 71,000 auto workers--one-third of its entire staff--because the giant auto firm had a backlog of 300,000 unsold cars.

In Turin, Fiat's Northern Italian home, Bonfante found a spreading mood of disquiet.

The wintry cold had already rolled down the slopes of the Piedmontese Alps to Turin, once the quasi-Parisian capital of the house of Savoy and now the Detroit of Italy. Outside Gate 20 of Fiat's Mirafiore plant, a toothless peddler hawked candy that he caustically called "special nougats for the economic crisis." Emerging workers were in no mood for sick jokes, and they bought none of the candy. Instead, they turned to union men passing out notices of protest strikes called against Fiat's shortened week.

"I support the strikes," said Maria Salati, 35, "short-term work is only a prelude to unemployment." Giuseppe de Biase, 40, disagreed. "I don't want to strike. That only benefits management. I'm afraid that if there's no work, we're going back to hunger." Jobless men will receive unemployment benefits, but they will still lose $10 a week in wages. Said Gerardo Mansi, 34, father of five: "Los ing $40 a month for somebody who's got to go through acrobatics to get through the month as it is is like losing an endowment."

As bad as the monetary loss from Fiat's grande stangata (big sting) was the realization that an economic crunch had at last hit Fiat, which survived earlier crises without shortening the work week.

Prosperity is not so old in industrial It aly that men have forgotten the chron ic unemployment that once forced southerners to trek into northern Eu rope for jobs.

Fear, resentment and an inflation rate of 33.6% in Turin -- the national average is 21.2% -- provoked rare civil demonstrations. When the city raised bus fares 30%, union leaders ordered "bus representatives" to take over fare collections on commuter buses at the old rates, thereby forcing the increase down to a lower, more acceptable rate. In Borgo Vittorio, a working-class quarter, residents lined up at a tent pitched under a wall covered with anti- American slogans -- NO TO ROCKEFELLER-CIA-AUSTERITY -- to have electric bills reduced.

In defiance of a 70% government-ordered increase in rates, Communist Party workers are collecting official bills from Turinese and replacing them with facsimiles on which the rates are halved.

Citizens then take the fake bills to Turin's post office and pay the lesser rate.

Backers of the move boast that more than 100,000 people are participating.

Pathetic Standoff. The militant left has carried civil disobedience one step further. Housing is short because of higher construction costs and tight credit, so radicals have led homeless squatters into whatever shelter is avail able. In one section of the city, 40 families raced to occupy brand-new housing already assigned to others. They held it against the frustrated protests of the rightful tenants, some of whom had been waiting years. It was a pathetic stand off between different dispossessed.

The squatters spent days demon strating for housing. Last week, after a delegation was rebuffed at city hall, they milled about the building, brandishing boards and iron bars, until carabinieri in riot gear drove them off. In the 19th century square where they jostled, the hero ic bronze statue of the "Green Count" of Savoy (a 14th century nobleman named Amadeo VI, whose sobriquet derives from his inevitable green jousting costume) had been draped with a new red flag. Beneath the statue of the count, a blonde girl frugged incongruously on the pedestal as the fighting rolled on.

Things are bound to get worse. The Fiat layoff will eventually affect 50,000 employees of satellite industries. Turin householders, meanwhile, have already been notified that heating-oil prices will be doubled this year from $15 a month to $30 for a two-room apartment.

Ominously, the kind of civil disobedience that has taken root in Turin is beginning to spread all across northern Italy. In Milan, protesters are refusing to pay increases in rents, bus fares and schoolbook charges. In nearby Monza last week, Pietro Russolillo, a 50-year-old schoolteacher, dramatically drove up to the police station to turn himself in for not paying the una tantum, or onetime surtax that the Rumor government imposed on 12 million cars. "I am ready to pay ten times the amount," declared Russolillo with a flourish, "but first you must persuade me that the money will be put to proper use."

The police announced that they would move against Russolillo "immediately." Because of the snail's pace of Italian justice, however, by the time Russolillo pays the $240 fine, inflation will have made it no worse than the $50 una tantum he owes now.

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