1 Million Converge on Rome to Protest Cutbacks : Italy: In the city’s largest demonstration since WWII, marchers oppose plan to slash pensions, social services.

Factory worker Eduardo Fumagalli rode all night on a train to help deliver a message that rolled like thunder--1 million voices strong--over a swollen, partisan Rome on Saturday.

“We are here to explain that something is wrong. A rich man’s government is stealing from the poor,” said Fumagalli, a 48-year-old woodworker from the northern city of Lecco.

In what organizers called the largest street demonstration in Rome since World War II, labor unions delivered a stinging rebuttal to plans by billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to slash pensions and social services.

It was worker against government, left against right, in the latest round of labor counterattack against belt-tightening by Berlusconi’s young, conservative government.

Workers flocked to Rome for spirited, peaceful protests that overflowed three of the Eternal City’s most historic public spaces in simultaneous demonstrations--the Piazza del Popolo, the Circus Maximus and the giant piazza before the basilica of St. John Lateran.

“The new budget restricts pensions, health care and funds for the development of the south. All the cuts are against those Italians who have the least,” complained Fausto Pastori, a 45-year-old valve maker from Legnano, near Milan.

In Circus Maximus, the amphitheater where chariots raced in Roman times, skyscraper cranes dangled giant loudspeakers broadcasting labor’s outrage across a vast, colorful and good-natured crowd gathered under the flags of unions and left-wing political parties.

“We will not have it!” screamed a giant banner on the podium where speakers railed against Berlusconi’s proposed 1995 budget cuts of $33 billion, which would reduce the government deficit by one-third.

Berlusconi says he will demand parliamentary approval of the budget in a vote of confidence Monday.

“You can’t change the numbers, not with one strike or with 10 strikes. The numbers are there. I found them; I didn’t produce them,” Berlusconi told reporters during a nationwide general strike last month that set the stage for Saturday’s protest.

On a cloudless autumn day with just enough breeze to set flags and banners snapping, police agreed with organizers that the three Rome demonstrations drew more than 1 million people.

The atmosphere was festive, but it masked a swelling sense of alarm among Italian workers watching the dismantlement of one of Europe’s most comprehensive social safety nets. There have been strikes all autumn--with more to come.

“I started work at 14 with the promise that I could retire after 35 years with a decent pension. The promise is broken and they say I should buy a private pension. Even if I had the money, where would I get one--from one of Berlusconi’s insurance companies?” asked Mario Lafela, 44, a metalworker from Milan who brought his wife and teen-age daughters to demonstrate with him.

Cabinet spokesman Giuliano Ferrara told Italian television that the disputed budget is “in the interest of future generations” and said Saturday’s demonstration had turned into a generalized anti-government protest.

Berlusconi, a political rookie, sprang to power last spring from the ashes of a political Establishment destroyed by a corruption scandal.

Attempting to balance the books--government debt equals a staggering 123% of last year’s gross national product--Berlusconi has attacked social programs that were sacred cows for nearly half a century.

The new budget proposes spending cuts in education, defense, scientific research and health care, but the biggest cutbacks target a generous pension system often scored for its corruption.