BELGIUM - General strike in the public sector against the rise of the age of retirement with two years, one of the new austerity measures of the freshly formed governement. The strike paralysed big part of economic life in Belgium. The day before the announced strike, wildcat strikes paralysed railroad trafic, and these wildcat strikes continued also after the "official" ending of the 24h strike.
Pickets of strikers went out to block state and economic institutions which didn't strike. The morning of the strike, pickets put up burning barricades on the entrances roads to Bruxelles, causing big trafic chaos to reach Brussels.
In Wallonia, the whole public sector came to a standstill. In Flanders, the strike was less followed and a virulent campagne against the strikers was launched by the nationalists, the bosses' organisations and the "honnest civilians taken hostage by the strike".
22/12/20111
