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Govt employees go on one-day strike

Millions of state and central government employees in India went on a one-day strike on Wednesday against plans to push ahead with tough economic reforms, a union confederation and a government official said.

The strike by government employees was the first major challenge to Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha's plans to reform decades-old labour laws and streamline the government announced in his 2001-02 Budget earlier this year.

"This is going to be the biggest-ever strike by government employees. It is a warning to the government to desist from adopting dangerous policies," S K Vyas, secretary general of the Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers told Reuters.

He said the strike had affected almost all government offices in the east and south of the country.

But in Delhi, a number of offices were functioning normally, a government official told Reuters.

The confederation said in a statement they were striking against government plans to cut jobs, turn departments into corporate entities and change rigid labour laws to make hiring and firing of workers easier.

Over two million government employees stayed away from work in the western state of Maharashtra, one of the country's most industrialised regions, a state government spokesman said.

Schools, colleges, government departments and even hospitals in the country's financial capital, Bombay, were deserted while senior government officials who are normally not members of the unions wore black badges to work in solidarity with the junior and middle-level employees.

Railway employees and workers of defence establishments had been exempt from the strike call and government workers in the flood-hit eastern state of Orissa would also not strike, Vyas said.

The central government has said it will press ahead with the privatisation of state firms and the easing of labour laws as key elements of a second generation of India's 10-year reform programme.

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