Around 5,000 public service workers, including policemen and firemen, protested in central Warsaw on Wednesday against plans to freeze their salaries next year as part of a government drive to tame state spending. Waving banners of the Solidarity trade union and white and red Polish national flags, the protesters marched to parliament where they handed in a petition demanding a repeal of austerity measures planned in the 2011 draft budget.
"The government's idea of freezing wages is ridiculous. Who will do the work of the police, the fire service or the public administration? In two or three years they will have all moved to work in the private sector instead," said Robert Osmycki, head of the fire-fighters' section of the Solidarity union.
"Who then will provide security for the state and for society?" he said. "I am afraid a lot of civil servants will lose their jobs," said Stefan Bagan, from the tax collectors' federation. A red open-top double-decker London bus carrying a brass band of coal miners lent a festive note to the protest. The protest is part of a wider wave of discontent sweeping Europe, where unions are staging rallies against austerity measures that analysts say are unlikely to deter cash-strapped governments.