Spain's unions said three quarters of all public sector workers joined their strike against austerity measures today but it was business as usual in Madrid with few disruptions at hospitals, schools or government offices.
The two largest Spanish unions said as many as 75 per cent of 2.3 million workers in state-run entitites, which employ one in five Spaniards, did not turn up for work.
The government reported only 11 per cent absenteeism, though its figures included only the offices of the central government and not regional administration or public services.
Today's one-day work stoppage and evening march were called after the government forced through a plan to shave €15 billion off the budget with public sector savings including wage cuts.
But unions hope the action will also help gauge support for a possible general strike on labour reform.
Economists consider reform of the labour market, along with restructuring the banking sector and cutting the deficit, as essential to resolving economic problems which include the highest unemployment rate in the euro zone at 20 per cent.
Fears of debt crisis contagion after Greece's woes have piled pressure on the euro zone's fourth largest economy to clean up its act.
Hundreds of public sector workers gathered outside the economy ministry in the morning waving red union flags. A march will take place in the city this evening.
But much of Madrid kept working.
"Everyone is working as usual here ... My husband who teaches in a school outside Madrid in Alcala de Henares also tells me it is business as usual there," said Ana, a teacher at a public school in Canillejas in north Madrid.
"I think it depends on each school however ... there are some classes where kids have not turned up but here the teachers are all in."
Public sector workers face average wage cuts of 5 per cent for this year and a freeze for 2011 as part of a plan to cut the budget deficit to 9.3 per cent of gross domestic product this year, from 11.2 per cent in 2009, and then to 6 per cent in 2011.
But many civil servants said ahead of the strike they would not join because they understood the need for cuts and felt lucky to have a job when so many did not.
The one-day strike comes a day before the government presents its draft of a labour reform package to unions and business leaders. The government has said it will push through labour reforms on June 16th regardless of whether or not it achieves consensus with the other parties.
The reforms are aimed at dismantling a two-tier system which leaves many contract workers with few rights and others prohibitively expensive to lay off.
Spanish unions, who have been involved in talks over the reforms for months with no result so far, said they were ready to call a general strike if reforms threatened workers' rights.
"If they continue with these measures, this is the first step of a great war in Spain," Jose Luis Fernandez, a spokesman for USO, one of the smaller unions, told Reuters.
While Spaniards express frustration with president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, they show little appetite for a fight.
"The government is doing what it can in the crisis," said Jose Angel (32), a Red Cross employee.
"I don't understand why civil servants' wages would be cut," he said, but added: "It shouldn't go as far as general strike."
Reuters