Public Sector Workers In Spain Strike Over Wage Cuts

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Public-sector workers in Spain have begun a 24-hour strike to protest an average five per cent cut in pay, the country's first public wage cuts in three decades.

The trade union confederation CCOO has called upon more than 2.5 million public-sector employees to join the industrial action Tuesday.

Early reports say municipal cleaning services were largely paralyzed in the morning hours.

Most of the postal workers also joined the strike, while sectors such as health services, firefighters and prisons were providing minimum services, and some public broadcasters cut down on programs, trade union leaders claimed. Hundreds of thousands from schools and local government also joined the stir.

The strike was the first major labor unrest faced by Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero since he took over power in 2004.

After insisting for months that Spain would be relatively unaffected by the economic crisis, the Socialist government backtracked on a policy of not slashing social benefits under pressure from the European Union and other international analysts, who were concerned that the European debt crisis that began in Greece could spread to Spain.

The salary cut was part of a government austerity package aimed at reducing the country's budget deficit from 11.2 per cent in 2009 to six per cent in 2011 and to below the EU limit of three per cent by 2013.

The bitter austerity measures, announced last month, threaten the public sector employees with freezing of salaries in 2011. The government estimates a cost cutting of 4.5 billion euros ($5.4 billion) by this measure.

The austerity package worth 15 billion euros ($18 billion) also includes freezing pensions, trimming public investments and eliminating a bonus to the parents of new-born children.

Demonstrations were also planned all over the country Tuesday, and an eventual general strike is in the offing over the government's plans to reduce protection for workers on permanent contracts in order to make the labor market more flexible.