Czech civil servants storm government office

Public sector workers in the Czech Republic on Tuesday stormed the country’s interior ministry during a protest against planned pay cuts.

Some 30,000 marched through the capital of Prague, police said.

Ministers want to trim the state wage bill by ten percent and reform civil service pensions.

The Czech Republic’s public deficit — when a government spends more money than it earns in a year — stands at 5.3 percent of gross domestic product.

The government wants to trim that to 4.6 percent by next year.

Strikes and social unrest have become increasingly common in Europe as governments cut back on benefits to balance their budgets.

Unions have asked workers across the continent to join a general strike on September twenty ninth in a show of solidarity.

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