ROME (Reuters) - Italian public sector workers on Friday announced plans for a one-day demonstration on Nov. 8 against spending cuts and a public administration overhaul as verbal sparring increased between the unions and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
The country's three main union confederations, the CGIL, CISL and UIL said they would be protesting against "five years of forced cuts and pay freezes and more than 10 of hiring freezes".
"The system is close to collapse while spending keeps going up despite welfare cuts and the heavy price paid by public service workers," the unions said in a joint statement.
"On November 8, we will all be on the streets in Rome, all together to defy this government of illusions and division," they said.
Separately, Italy's biggest metalworkers union, the Fiom, announced it would hold a nationwide demonstration in Rome on Oct. 18 to protest against Renzi's plans to overhaul labour laws and ease firing restrictions.
Tension has built up in recent weeks between Renzi and the unions, who accuse the centre-left leader of pursuing right-wing policies and wanting to make working class people pay the cost of spending cuts and unpopular labour reforms.
On Friday, Renzi hit back, saying in a video posted on Youtube that the unions cared little about the jobless and carried much of the responsibility for a youth unemployment rate of around 43 percent.
"Where were you during all these years when Italy's greatest injustice was developing: the injustice between those who have jobs and those who don't, between those who have permanent contracts and those who have temporary ones?," Renzi said.
Earlier this month, Public Administration Minister Marianna Madia confirmed that pay rises for Italy's 3 million public servants would be frozen for a sixth year running next year, a move expected to save 2.1 billion euros (1.6 billion pounds) from the 2015 budget.
Opinion polls show Renzi still enjoys strong approval ratings more than six months after he came to office in February but the protest underlines an increasingly difficult political climate for the 39-year-old prime minister.
Italy, in recession for the third time in six years and with a public debt expected to top 135 percent of gross domestic product this year, is struggling to keep its deficit within the European Union's 3 percent of GDP limit and needs to find cuts of some 20 billion euros for 2015.
As well as a battle to overhaul the sprawling public service, he has also begun moves to reform labour laws but faces stiff opposition from unions and also the left of his own Democratic Party.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Gavin Jones; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
