Argentine unions call for strike to protest IMF austerity plan BUENOS AIRES, May 31 (AFP) - Tens of thousands of people marched Wednesday through downtown Buenos Aires to protest a new government economic austerity plan, with union leaders calling for a one-day national strike next week. In an unusual move, the protest march was strongly supported by Roman Catholic church leaders, who hold the IMF largely responsible for Argentina's economic malaise. Waving Argentine flags, the protesters paraded down the streets leading to the Plaza de Mayo and staged a massive rally in front of the Casa Rosada, Argentina's presidential palace. "Nothing will move in Argentina, not even the leaves on the trees," labor leader Hugo Moyano told the crowd, in calling for a June 9 national strike. Argentina "could derail the financial dictatorship" of the International Monetary Fund, he said, while at the same time urging his countrymen to refuse to pay their taxes. Organizers said 80,000 people joined the protest, held one day after IMF economists arrived here to review the government's budgetary and revenue accounts. Never before had a visit of IMF economists sparked such wide-ranging protests, uniting previously divided unions and garnering support from Argentina's Catholic clerics, traditionally among the most conservative in Latin America. Union leaders used the rally to call for a national strike that would be the largest ever to confront President Fernando de la Rua, who took office in December. A strike earlier in May, to protest changes to Argentina's labor laws, was supported only by the most militant branch of the powerful General Confederation of Labor (CGT), headed by trucker Moyano. But Rodolfo Daer, who heads a moderate branch of the union, has joined with Moyano for next week's strike, as has Victor de Gennaro, of the Argentine Workers Confederation. Catholic church leaders have denounced the president's austerity plan, which would raise taxes, reduce social spending and cut the salaries of government employees in a bid to win badly needed loans from the IMF. Moyano urged Argentines to engage in "fiscal disobedience" by refusing to pay their personal taxes, which already jumped between eight and 22 percent in January -- the steepest increase in a decade. "We are going to be imprisoned, fined. We're going to hit them where it hurts, we're going to call for fiscal disobedience so that Argentines' strength doesn't go to foreign debt," Moyano said. De la Rua inherited a public debt of 115 billion dollars from his predecessor, Carlos Menem. The IMF has granted Argentina a 7.3 billion dollar loan in exchange for a commitment to keep this year's budget deficit below 4.7 billion dollars. The government had spent nearly half that amount in the first four months of 2000. The belt-tightening is generally supported by business leaders here, who say the reforms are needed to bolster the economy and create new jobs. Argentina's unemployment rate stands at 14 percent, but another 14 percent of the workforce is underemployed -- meaning they have temporary or part-time work that is insufficient to support a single person at the poverty line. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Thousands Protest Argentina Government Cuts, IMF By Robert Elliott BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Thousands of union activists on Wednesday marched through downtown Buenos Aires protesting government cutbacks they blame on the International Monetary Fund's constant call for economic austerity. Leaving the center-city streets unusually bare of traffic, the march brought together the hard-line and moderate wings of the General Workers Confederation (CGT) -- the country's largest grouping of unions -- for the first time since they split in late February. An estimated 20,000 marchers descended on the plaza facing Government House under cloudy skies, some waving banners that read ``The Death of Salaries.'' Ten people clad in black hoods and shirts labeled ``IMF'' carried a casket labeled ``education, salaries, small-and-medium sized business, health.'' ``We have got to put an end to this savage IMF austerity,'' said Patricia Walsh, a leader of the United Leftist Militants party who helped lead the march. President Fernando de la Rua remarked the strike was ''perhaps a call to international financial organizations that they must also attend to necessary social solidarity.'' The two CGT factions will begin a 24-hour national strike on June 9 against public sector salary cuts and layoffs, said Victor de Gennaro, head of the Argentine Workers Center union. The Argentine government on Monday slashed $938 million from planned expenditures to help lasso its runaway fiscal deficit, which in 1999 hit a record $7.1 billion. As per a $7.2 billion standby loan deal with the IMF, the 2000 deficit has to come in at no more than $4.7 billion. The government cutbacks, including $590 million clipped from public sector salaries, are among a long line of austerity measures the Argentine public has had to swallow. The stock market rose on the spending reduction, but Congress remained closed as public sector employees railed against the dismissal of 700 full-time workers after the shutdown of the legislature's printing press. Top economists concurred it will take a further downsizing of the state and other creative moves to bring the government's books in line and kick-start the economy, which has been stagnant for the last 22 months. ``This is a sickness and we are trying to apply the medicine,'' De la Rua said in defense of the cuts, dubbing the country's wobbling economy as his ``inheritance.'' Argentina's government sliced public spending by $511 million in the first quarter of the year and will continue on that pace through December, Undersecretary of Economic and Regional Programming Miguel Bein said on Wednesday.