By the standards set by neighbouring Greece, or any other European country that has seen large-scale industrial action over the past year, the first day of the Bulgarian railway workers' strike on November 24 went off with a barely audible whimper, rather than the loud bang envisioned by the trade unions.

The exact number of the trains affected was not clear, with trade unions and the Transport Ministry issuing contradictory reports.

The strike committee, backed by Bulgaria's two large trade union blocs, claimed to have stopped 110 of 123 trains. The ministry, for its part, put the number at 59 of 130 trains.

"The workers on a large number of those 59 trains do not support the strike, but were forced to stop work because the service personnel along the routes has joined the strike," the ministry said in a statement.

Four international trains had been halted – Belgrade-Sofia, Moscow-Sofia, Istanbul-Sofia and Istanbul-Bucharest – despite the ministry's appeal for the trade unions to let those trains through. The passenger trains were the only ones affected by the strike, with cargo traffic almost entirely unaffected.

The ministry has attempted to minimise the extent of the strike, saying that only 563 out of 13 000 employees of the railways infrastructure company joined the strike. In the state railways BDZ, which employs another 13 000 people, only 350 people had declared work stoppage, according to the statement.

Part of the reason for the continued movement of trains, the trade unions said, was that BDZ's management employed strikebreakers, which put at risk the safety of trains.

Despite the limited impact of the strike, BDZ expected heavy daily losses from the work stoppage. "Today was a complete waste. People are afraid to travel and we sold no tickets," the head of the marketing and sales department at BDZ's passenger division Dimitar Kostadinov told Focus news agency.

BDZ expects a loss of revenue of 200 000 leva a day from its passenger subsidiary and 400 000 leva a day from its freight division. According to BDZ management, about 90 000 people use trains for their daily commute.

The trade unions called the strike in response to the Cabinet's cost-cutting plan that envisioned laying off 2000 workers, cutting 150 lines and hiking prices by between nine per cent and 15 per cent, all by the year's end, in order to break even.

This would save the company about 50 million a year and allow BDZ to apply for a World Bank loan worth 460 million leva to finance further reforms and modernisation, which the railways, indebted to the tune of 700 million leva, need to stay competitive.