Slovenia's biggest police union on Friday launched an open-ended, work-to-rule, strike to pressure the government into honouring a set of promises.
The industrial action by the PSS union, which represents 5,000 of the 7,000 workers employed by the Interior Ministry, was taking place in spite of the fact that the conservative government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa had just scrapped plans to stop paying overtime bonuses to police.
The smaller SPS police union opted not to join the strike following Thursday's government decision on overtime bonuses.
PSS leaders insist that the government must fulfill all of the commitments it made in May, when another strike was held.
The Interior Ministry says the only pending issue concerns a list of work-related diseases, which has been delayed as a result of a recent pension reform.
During the work-to-rule protest, police will maintain security and perform emergency activities, but will not issue tickets for minor violations and will deliberately perform slowly.
Slovenian public sector unions have scheduled a massive strike for January 23 to protest against government austerity measures, notably a 5-per-cent wage cut.
The global economic crisis has hit the export-oriented former Yugoslav republic, now a part of the eurozone, forcing it to drastically reduce spending in order to avert bankruptcy.