New Delhi, July 19 -- ROME - Carabinieri officers in formal uniforms stood alongside Navy sailors and Army infantry troops Saturday as roughly 6,000 Italian military and law enforcement personnel marched through central Rome, carrying a demand their unions had spent two years trying to advance in closed rooms before deciding that the street might accomplish what the negotiating table had not.

the Army, Navy, Air Force, Carabinieri paramilitary corps and the Guardia di Finanza, which handles financial crime and border enforcement. Union organizers described it as the first joint march in modern Italian history across the country's entire defense and law enforcement establishment, and said it reflected a collective decision that sector-by-...