Police detained 70 people in Istanbul as they tried to march, garment workers in Cambodia defied a government ban to demand higher wages, and workers in Spain deplored the country's 19 percent jobless rate. The square was declared off limits to demonstrations for a third year running and police blocked points of entry, allowing only small groups of labor union representatives to lay wreaths at a monument there. UGT and CC.OO unions on Monday demanded that Spain's conservative government roll back its labor reforms that made it cheaper to fire workers and increase wages and pensions. Under conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Spain's economy has rebounded and unemployment has dropped from 27 percent in 2013 to 19 percent, but that is still the second-highest unemployment rate in the 28-nation European Union behind Greece. The rally and a march Monday was by the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions and by the Democratic Left Alliance, which lost all parliament seats in the 2015 election that brought the conservative populist Law and Justice party to power. Riot police watched carefully as more than 1,000 garment workers defied a government ban on marching to deliver a petition to the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, demanding a higher minimum wage and more freedom of assembly. The marchers, holding a forest of banners, filled a street a short distance from the parliament complex and advanced noisily until they were stopped by a barricade and lines of police, holding batons, shields and guns capable of firing gas canisters. The major Cambodian labor unions traditionally have been loosely allied with opposition parties, posing a potential political threat to longtime authoritarian leader Hun Sen. A few thousand left-wing activists and laborers marched and held noisy rallies to press for higher wages and an end to temporary contractual jobs that deprive workers of many benefits. Thousands of garment industry workers in the impoverished South Asian nation gathered to demand better wages and legal protection.
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