Chamorro Faces Her First Union Crisis : Nicaragua: 40,000 civil servants strike. Their action follows an official move to reorganize the bureaucracy.

The Sandinista union representing Nicaragua’s 40,000 government employees declared an indefinite strike Thursday, plunging President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro into her first labor crisis two weeks after taking office.

The union called the strike after Chamorro suspended the civil service law to give her Cabinet ministers a free hand to dismiss senior holdovers from the Sandinista administration and to reorganize the government bureaucracy.

A decree signed by Chamorro and her labor minister, and issued without comment, also announced that large wage increases decreed by the Sandinista government in its final weeks were being “reviewed.”

Hours after the decree was broadcast, workers left their desks but remained inside several ministries and locked out Chamorro’s officials. Police made no move to oust them. The president continued working in her downtown office and was not affected, a spokesman said.

The strike--preceded by walkouts Wednesday by workers in the National Assembly, the Labor Ministry and the Foreign Ministry--shut down 11 government ministries but no public services. Sandinista labor leaders, who claim to represent 200,000 workers nationwide, threatened a disruptive general strike--shutting down banks, schools, public transportation and utilities--if Chamorro does not settle personally with the government workers by the weekend. Union leaders said she agreed to meet with them today.

The labor dispute broke an uneasy truce that had prevailed between the center-right government and Sandinista-led unions since Chamorro’s inauguration April 25, and it underscored the obstacles Chamorro faces in trying to mend the war-battered economy by reducing huge government deficits.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front, defeated in the Feb. 25 election, remains the strongest force in organized labor. The union leading the strike is the General Confederation of Public Administration Workers. It was formed under a Sandinista-inspired civil service law that took effect in March, and it is affiliated with the main Sandinista labor organization.

Jose Angel Bermudez, the union’s secretary general, called the president’s decree an illegal attempt “to prepare the conditions for a massive layoff of state workers.” But he emphasized that the union was open to negotiations with her.

Labor Minister Francisco Rosales, a former Sandinista, declared Wednesday that the new civil service law is unconstitutional. He said it violates a provision of the labor code that prevailed throughout a decade of Sandinista rule prohibiting government employees from having their own union or going on strike.

Rosales said the law tied the new government’s hands by making it impossible to dismiss senior Sandinista officials, such as the directors of state-owned banks, without proof that they committed crimes.

“The strategy of the Sandinista government in its final days was to set the stage for increasing chaos,” he told reporters. “This is why this union was created.”

The suspension of the law will allow the government to fire employees who strike or leave their jobs to hold demonstrations such as the march Wednesday by 2,000 government workers demanding wage increases. Officials said the law would be modified by administrative regulations before being put back into force.

Underlying the conflict is a wage dispute touched off by the new government’s 50% devaluation of the cordoba, which caused prices to soar during its first week in office. Promising to keep wages apace with inflation, the government last week decreed a 60% pay raise for its employees, but the Sandinista union is demanding a 200% raise.