TRADE union members in Uruguay staged a 24-hour nationwide general strike yesterday to press their demand for increased spending on education and health.

Thousands of workers took part in the stoppage as those affiliated to Uruguay’s Central Union of Workers urged MPs to vote for a budget that increases public spending to at least 6 per cent of GDP.

Uruguayan Federation of Teachers and Public Education Workers spokesman Elbia Pereira called for a needs budget and said the “ball is now in parliament’s court,” warning legislators against “denying their children and those of their neighbours a better education.”

As trade unionists gathered for a rally outside the Congress building in the capital Montevideo, Federation of Public Health Officials national president Martin Pereira said: “There are proposals on the table and we have to keep working; the government must understand that health and education are [a fundamental part] of the rights of the people.

“We cannot have a society without education, without quality public health. It cannot be that the rich have a better education and better health and workers have to settle for what we have.”

Mr Pereira warned bosses and the government that they were “going to break their teeth” if they tried to break the unity of the labour movement.

Closing the rally, Uruguayan Health Federation general secretary Jorge Bermudez sounded the alarm over “an offensive by the ruling classes” aimed at regime change and putting Uruguay at the mercy of the International Monetary Fund.

He insisted that the union movement would remain defiant and called for the government to invest in public services.

“Health is a social right of the people and not a commodity. In Uruguay, that is still not a reality,” he said.