Polish teachers protest against pension reform

Hundreds of Polish schoolteachers protested against pension reform plans yesterday as Poland's biggest teachers' union, the ZNP, which represents about 300,000 teachers, has threatened to call a strike against the plans under which they would lose their current right to retire early.

"Negotiations with the government are leading nowhere. We need a serious strike now," protester Ewa Kurczewska said outside the education ministry.

Poland's pension system allows around 1.2 million people - mainly state sector workers such as teachers, doctors, nurses and miners - to retire after as little as 15 years in service.

The early retirements cost the state budget some 30 billion zlotys (€9 billion) a year. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who won last year's election on promises of public finance reform, wants to cut the number of early retirees to 200,000.

"We want to remain a group entitled to retire earlier," Slawomir Broniarz, head of the ZNP, told the protesters.

The demonstration is the latest sign of worker unrest in the European Union's largest ex-communist economy, which has seen strong economic growth in recent years but is also battling rising inflation and labour shortages in some areas.

Last Friday, some 18,000 workers took part in a protest march through Warsaw organised by Poland's main trade union Solidarity to demand higher wages and pensions.

The centre-right Tusk government, which had hoped to wrap up the politically charged negotiations with labour unions over pension reform back in May, has said it hopes to send the reform Bill to Parliament this month and to enact it in 2009.