General Strike plans move forward

Spain’s Federation of Public Services (FSP), which is part of the UGT trade union, is due to present the Employment Minister with notice of intention to hold a strike across the public sector on June 8th.

A press release given by the FSP stated how this is the first step that the UGT has to take in order to legally carry out the strike which is being held in protest over the civil service pay cuts recently approved by the government.

The government ruled that salaries are to be slashed by between 0.56 and 7% for almost all public sector workers, with more senior workers and members of the government seeing a cut of up to 15%.

The Strike on the 8th June has been orchestrated jointly across a number of trade unions and is expected to be a "great success" with the same "maximum participation" as was seen in the May 20th strike.

By reducing civil servants' salaries across the public sector the government hopes to save 2.3 billion euros this year, rising to 2.2 billion in 2011.