BRAZILIAN police and striking subway workers have clashed in a central Sao Paulo metro station, with union officials threatening to maintain the stoppage through this week's opening match at the World Cup.
The strike is looking like a huge headache for the authorities because the subway is the main means of transporting thousands of fans to Thursday's opening game between Brazil and Croatia at the country's iconic Maracana stadium about 12 miles east of central Sao Paulo.
Riot police firing tear gas pushed about 100 striking workers out of the station as the strike threw Sao Paulo's congested traffic into chaos for a fifth day. Only about half of the city's subway stations were operating.
"This is the way they negotiate, with tear gas and repression," said Alexandre Roland, a union leader, after confronting riot police.
The striking workers marched towards the city centre, where they planned to join a wide-ranging rally by a range of activist groups, including homeless workers demanding low-cost housing and a group calling for free public transport.
Mr Roland said the strike would continue beyond the tournament's opening game unless the government met the workers' demands for a 12 per cent pay increase.
At the weekend a Sao Paulo labour court fined the union more than £100,000 for the first four days of the strike and said it would add £130,000 for each additional day the stoppage continued.
The government-controlled company that runs the subways is offering staff an 8 per cent pay increase and says it cannot go higher because fares to commuters have not been raised for two years.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article