By Tracy Rucinski and Martin Roberts
MADRID (Reuters) - A day of protest against Spanish austerity measures drew fewer than 4,000 to an evening march in central Madrid, a downbeat end to what was seen as a litmus test for popular support for a general strike on labour reform.
Tuesday's one-day work stoppage and marches across the country were called after the government forced through a plan to shave 15 billion euros (12.4 billion pounds) off the budget with public sector savings including wage cuts.
Economists consider reform of the labour market, along with restructuring the banking sector and cutting the deficit, as essential to resolving economic problems which include the highest unemployment rate in the euro zone at 20 percent.
Fears of debt crisis contagion after Greece's woes have piled pressure on the euro zone's fourth largest economy to clean up its act.
Spanish unions have said they are ready to call a general strike if reforms threatened workers' rights, and remained defiant on Tuesday.
"We know that we have the backing from the vast majority of the population ... there are alternatives to the austerity programmes put forward by the government," Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, head of the largest union Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), told the marchers standing in the rain in central Madrid.
"If the government puts forward a labour reform that hurts workers rights, there should be no doubt there will be a general strike and the government should know it will be massive."
But on Tuesday, it was business as usual in Madrid with few disruptions at hospitals, schools or government offices.
The government and unions differed widely on the final take-up of the strike, which media said was due to the fact they appeared to have used different criteria.
The country's two largest unions maintained that as many as 75 percent of the 2.3 million public sector workers did not turn up for work.
The government's number was less than 12 percent, but that included only the central administration and not public services under regional administration, for which they had no data, including how many workers that left out.
"Everyone is working as usual here ... My husband who teaches in a school outside Madrid in Alcala de Henares also tells me it is business as usual there," said Ana, a teacher at a public school in Canillejas in north Madrid.
"I think it depends on each school however ... there are some classes where kids have not turned up but here the teachers are all in."
WAGE CUTS
The only disruption was reported in the capital of the Rioja wine region, where a fight broke out between the two unions over who should lead the march, the El Mundo newspaper said. One marcher's nose was broken.
Public sector workers face average wage cuts of 5 percent for this year and a freeze for 2011 as part of a plan to cut the budget deficit to 9.3 percent of gross domestic product this year, from 11.2 percent in 2009, and then to 6 percent in 2011.
Some civil servants said ahead of the strike they would not join in because they understood the need for cuts and felt lucky to have a job when so many did not.
But economists and political analysts said it would be unwise to interpret too much about the overall mood towards the government's handling of the worst economic slump in decades, especially with details of the much-anticipated labour reform still to come.
"We've suffered five wage freezes, now a five point cut," said Juan Carlos Gomez, a civil servant who marched in the protest in Madrid.
"Next year will be the sixth freeze in the 25 years I've been a civil servant. In 25 years, my purchasing power has fallen 30 percent behind inflation."
The government presents its draft of a labour reform package to unions and business leaders on Wednesday. It has said it will push through the reforms on June 16 regardless of whether it achieves consensus in talks that have been going on for months.
The reforms are aimed at dismantling a two-tier system which leaves many contract workers with few rights and others prohibitively expensive to lay off.
While Spaniards express frustration with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, they show little appetite for a fight.
"The government is doing what it can in the crisis," said Jose Angel, 32, a Red Cross employee.
"I don't understand why civil servants' wages would be cut," he said, but added: "It shouldn't go as far as general strike."
(Additional reporting by Nigel Davies, Judy MacInnes and Reuters Television, Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Charles Dick)
