A new wave of strikes has hit this communist nation, and thousands of shoe workers marched on Parliament today in heavy rain to protest the plummeting living standards. A triple cordon of police officers guarded the doors of the Parliament building as about 3,000 shoe workers, mostly female, chanted: ``You are afraid of women, shame on you!'' and ``Thieves, Thieves!'' At the Labin coal pits, 148 miles southwest of Zagreb, about 1,000 miners stopped working Monday to demand payment of a bonus for having fulfilled the annual production quota one month ahead of schedule, Belgrade newspapers reported. Also Monday, several hundred workers at the Bor copper mines, about 90 miles southwest of Belgrade, staged a brief work stoppage for the same reason as the Labin miners, newspapers reported. More than 3,000 employees of a fertilizer factory in Sabac, about 50 miles west of Belgrade, staged a street protest Monday, accusing municipal Communist Party leaders of inefficiency and dishonesty. As a result of the protest, the entire municipal leadership was replaced, press reports said. In Belgrade, a total of about 7,000 shoe workers went on strike today. About 3,000 of them marched almost 3 miles in the rain to reach the Parliament building, chanting anti-government slogans and demanding salary raises. ``We want proper wages, don't torment us!'' the crowd chanted, pressing against the police cordon. After several hours, the workers were allowed to enter Parliament, where they spoke with party officials. ``I can't feed myself and my children with $45 a month,'' Gvozdenka Pavlovic said. The average Yugoslav salary is about $100 a month. The demonstrators dispersed peacefully after Serbian Communist Party leader Slobodoan Milosevic promised he would visit their factory. Yugoslavia is facing increasing social and labor unrest as a result of the worst economic crisis in the country's postwar history, including a 236 percent annual inflation rate and a $21 billion foreign debt. According to official figures, workers' buying power has declined by 25 percent since the beginning of this year and living standards have dropped to 1960s levels. In the past 10 months, there have been more than 1,000 strikes, many of them involving street demonstrations, the government said. Official Belgrade trade unions today called on citizens to refuse to pay electricity bills if the latest 31 percent price raise was not canceled. News reports said about one-fourth of Belgrade's 2 million people have been unable to pay their electricity, water and heating bills. According to the reports, power companies have begun cutting off supplies in an effort to force people to pay. State-run newspapers said railroad workers in the capital said they would stage a strike Wednesday if their salaries were not raised by 50 percent. The strike would paralyze all rail traffic coming in and going out of the capital.
