As the German government braced itself for fresh wage talks with public sector unions this week, the country's 2.5 million civil servants signalled yesterday that they were unhappy with the government's pay offer.

Last week, the government reluctantly signed an arbitration accord on wages for Germany's rubbish collectors, police officers and bus drivers which offers a wage rise of 1.8 per cent in 2000 and 2.2 per cent next year.

Normally civil servants receive the same wage rise as the public service workforce but the government said its efforts to rein in runaway state spending meant it will not extend the public sector deal to include the civil service.

The Interior Ministry said it would raise civil service wages by 0.7 per cent this year and 1.6 per cent next year, in line with inflation. "Paying civil servants less than public service workers is unacceptable. Germany's 2.5 million civil servants won't stand for it," Mr Erhard Geyer, head of the German civil servants' association, said.