Hundreds of thousands of workers joined rallies in towns and cities across Russia on Thursday to protest against non-payment of wages at state enterprises and against rising unemployment.


Nelly Shatilova, a spokeswoman for the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, which represents 80 percent of the country's 55 million working people, said about half a million workers had taken part in the protest rallies in the country as a whole. Earlier, trade union officials said they expected 3 million people to take part.


Shatilova said the unions had scaled down their protests in response to government promises to fulfil some of the trades unions' demands.


"But two key demands are still on the agenda: to stop non-payment of salaries and to adopt preventive measures against mass unemployment," she said.


Mikhail Shmakov, chairman of the federation, told a rally of some 5,000 people on Moscow's Teatralnaya Ploshchad that, in the future, economic slogans could be changed to political actions if the government continued to break its obligations to the trade unions.


"Government, pay your debts to the workers!" Shmakov said. "Non-payment of salaries for several months has become the norm in this country."


Shatilova said the conciliation committee consisting of government and trade union representatives had reached an agreement Oct. 18 to toughen controls over illegal layoffs and to work out draft laws protecting workers' rights.


She said there was a draft decree that envisaged that 30 percent of enterprise revenue should be put towards paying off outstanding salaries.


"The draft law should be signed by the president and submitted to the State Duma by the end of the year," she said. "But few people in the regions believe any more in new promises by the state."


She said although the federation was not making any political demands, several local branches were now calling for the resignation of the government and the president.