Nicaragua Strike Eased as Talks Resume : Nicaragua: Workers say they won some concessions. They restore phone service and release medicine and oil shipments.

Backing down from its refusal to negotiate under pressure, the government resumed talks with Sandinista union leaders Wednesday, and both sides reported steps toward settling Nicaragua’s worst strike in 11 years.

President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro sent her labor minister and other top aides to restart the talks after public employees defied a back-to-work order Tuesday by shutting down the international airport and the telephone system, isolating a country in which government offices, banks, schools, bus lines and railroads were already closed.

After eight hours of talks, union leaders said they had won a preliminary agreement guaranteeing at least temporary job security for public employees and a promise of no reprisals against participants in the six-day-old protest by 50,000 workers.

In exchange, the unions quickly restored telephone service, allowed shipments of crude oil to refineries on a strike-bound railroad and released a shipment of medicine held up by striking customs agents at Managua’s Augusto Sandino Airport. The airport itself remained closed to national and international flights.

“The fact that they have started a dialogue is a great success for us,” said Jesse Luis Selva, a spokesman for the strike-leading General Confederation of Public Administration Workers. “The government can come out a winner too, because this will tend to stabilize the country.”

A second round of talks began in the afternoon over wages. In the morning session, the government doubled its offer of a 60% increase and the unions lowered their demand from a boost of 200% to one of 180%. Menial government jobs pay the equivalent of about $15 a month, while public employees with some technical skill earn at least $65.

The return of the government to the bargaining table after it declared the strike illegal Monday and threatened to fire the strikers was an official acknowledgement of Sandinista strength in the first major conflict of Chamorro’s three weeks in office, a dispute that goes far beyond wages.

Chamorro, who defeated President Daniel Ortega in the Feb. 25 elections, took office April 25 after a decade of revolutionary rule, inheriting what she called a bankrupt economy and a power structure built by the Sandinistas, whose supporters retain key positions in the government bureaucracy, the army, the police and the courts.

Ordered by the government to reopen strike-closed offices with minimal violence, riot police retreated from showdowns Tuesday with aggressive Sandinista pickets at several government buildings and have made no further moves to clear them.

In another setback for the government, the Sandinista-dominated appeals court in Managua ruled Wednesday that the strike is legal.

“The Sandinistas are showing very clearly that they can keep this government from governing,” said Luis Sanchez Sancho, a leader of Chamorro’s 14-party coalition in the National Assembly. “Violeta is sitting on a powder keg.”

The strike is the most disruptive in Nicaragua since 1979 when workers, often supported by their employers, paralyzed the country several times in a popular uprising against dictator Anastasio Somoza. After deposing Somoza in July that year, the Sandinista guerrillas took control of the labor movement and used force to discourage strikes.

A Chamorro aide said that the 60-year-old president, who has not joined the negotiations herself, does not yet regard the walkout as a severe crisis but is eager to resolve it anyway. Ortega, now the opposition leader, also appeared intent on a settlement. On Wednesday he visited Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo and asked the Roman Catholic leader to use his influence to keep the labor negotiations from breaking down. He also offered to open a “dialogue” between the Sandinista leadership and the government.

The strike started after the new government devalued the cordoba, setting off a burst of inflation, and offered workers a 60% wage boost to compensate. When some workers began striking to demand more, Chamorro last Thursday suspended a Sandinista-authored civil service law that gives public employees job security, prompting the walkout to spread to all ministries.