Portuguese workers strike over austerity measures

Portugal’s public sector workers are staging a 24-hour strike today in the latest protest to hit a European country imposing a national austerity plan.

The country is suffering disruption at schools, hospitals and public offices as government employees protest against a planned pay freeze and other spending cuts.

Court hearings and waste collection are also affected, although public transport is expected to run normally.

Trade unions representing more than 500,000 civil servants have joined forces for the first time in four years and predicted a big turnout.

Manuel Carvalho da Silva, head of the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers, said: “There is a huge amount of discontent.”

Portugal, like Greece and Spain, has seen its financial liabilities unsettle financial markets, and is under intense pressure to reduce its national debt.

The minority centre-left Socialist government included the planned austerity measures in its 2010 state budget, which parliament is expected to approve next week. The budget was delayed by a general election at the end of last year.

The debt-reducing policies have the support of right-of-centre parties which have said they will abstain from the budget vote, ensuring its passage.

The government has said it will present further cost-cutting measures later this month, though it has ruled out tax hikes. It also wants to cut the amount paid to civil servants who take early retirement.

Unions complain the government is refusing to negotiate.

Portugal’s budget deficit is projected to have reached a record 9.3% of gross domestic product last year – way above the 3% allowed for countries using the euro.

Public debt will climb to 85.4% of GDP this year, up from 76.6% in 2009.

Greece and Spain have also weathered street protests by workers angry over cuts.

In the latest moves in Greece, members of a union today occupied the finance ministry building in central Athens, hanging a massive banner from the top to protest against austerity measures.

Dozens of union members holding flags and chanting slogans blocked the entrance to the building, which stands on the capital’s central Syntagma Square, preventing employees from entering. They unfurled banners reading: “Rise up - everyone in the streets against the anti-popular measures.”

The union, the communist party-linked PAME, plans a demonstration in Athens later in the day.

The protest comes a day after the Socialist government announced painful new austerity measures worth about €4.8bn, including cutting civil service salaries and bonuses, freezing pensions and hiking taxes.

The measures come on top of an earlier austerity plan announced in January which failed to convince jittery markets.