Thousands of German public sector workers on strike

BERLIN, Mar 9 (Reuters) Around 41,000 public sector workers across Germany continued strike action today to protest plans to extend working hours, a day before key talks with employers, services union Verdi said.

Germany's biggest public sector strikes since the early 1990s extended to a 12th state today.

The strikes are now into their fifth week, leaving piles of uncollected rubbish in some towns and cities while disrupting kindergartens, hospitals and public administration.

Union and employer negotiators are due to hold further talks tomorrow to try to reach a breakthrough.

But after Verdi rejected an offer from municipal employers in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg yesterday, which the employers said went to the absolute limit, prospects of reaching a deal appear distant.

''I'm sceptical,'' Hartmut Moellring, chief negotiator for Tarifgemeinschaft der Laender (TdL), the state employers' umbrella organisation, told Reuters.

Verdi accused the employers of dragging the conflict out deliberately.

''The policy of Moellring and company threatens the interests of hundreds of thousands. It's a declaration of war against the people in this country,'' Verdi chief Frank Bsirske told a demonstration attended by around 20,000 people in Hanover.

The protests centre on plans by some state and local authority employers to increase the working week from 38.5 hours to 40 or more and to cut Christmas and holiday bonuses.

Verdi says the move would endanger the jobs of some 250,000 part time and trainee workers.

The dispute comes as Germany's state and municipal governments have been struggling to contain ballooning deficits that have helped push Germany's overall budget shortfall into persistent breach of European Union rules.

The southwestern state of Hesse today became the 12th state to be hit by strike action when workers at the university hospital in Frankfurt stopped work.

In Berlin, around 6,000 teachers represented by the GEW union also held demonstrations outside kindergartens, schools and universities, the union said.

Reuters KD VP0002