BRAZILIAN LABOUR UNREST SPREADS, MANY BANKS SHUT

  Brazil's labour unrest is spreading,
  with many banks, universities and government statistical
  offices on strike and more pay disputes looming.
      Bankworkers' leaders said that a national strike launched
  yesterday to press for a 100 pct immediate pay rise and monthly
  salary adjustments had the support of most of the 700,000
  workforce.
      The strike today closed the stock exchanges of Sao Paulo
  and Rio de Janeiro.
      For the government the one positive development on the
  labour front was the gradual return to work of the nation's
  40,000 seamen, who began a national strike on February 27.
      A union spokesman in Rio de Janeiro told Reuters about half
  the seamen had returned to work after accords with 22 companies
  and that the strike looked close to an end.
      Otherwise the labour scene looked bleak, with the bank
  strike posing the most serious problems for Brazil's
  crisis-laden economy.
      "If this goes on for more than a few days it will have a
  serious effect because normal financial operations will grind
  to a halt," said a western diplomat in Sao Paulo.
      Today Brazil's 50,000 university teachers in the 42 federal
  universities launched a national strike, with a broad political
  demand as well as a pay claim.
      David Fleischer, head of the political science department
  in Brasilia university, told Reuters the National Association
  of Higher Education Teachers wanted a full congressional
  inquiry into what had happened to government education funds.
      He said the universities were strapped for cash and that
  the association suspected the junior partner in the coalition
  government, the Liberal Front Party, PFL, of using education
  funds for projects which had helped their candidates in
  elections. The PFL holds the Education Ministry.
      Hardly any sectors of the economy are proving immune to the
  current labour unrest, caused by the return of high inflation,
  officially pegged at 33 pct for January-February.
      Other possible strikes looming include stoppages by oil
  industry workers and social security workers.
  

