More than 1,000 people have demonstrated outside the offices of a petrochemical firm in China抯 southern province of Guangdong against cuts in their pensions, RFA's Cantonese service reports.

The protesters, retired workers with the state-owned China Petrochemical Co. gathered outside the company's offices in the coastal city of Maoming in the southwest of the province, after a delegation that met with company officials was told the 10 percent reduction in pension packages would stay.

Our workers are not making an unreasonable demand, one protester, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Yang, told RFA. We started the company from nothing, and now it's gone public with annual production of three trillion yuan (U.S. $37 billion). The company is in good shape.

Yang said the pension cuts were unjustified given current business conditions and high inflation in the province. It should take care of its retired workers when it has the ability, he said.

Calls during business hours to China Petrochemicals Maoming offices went unanswered.

One retiree, a 62-year-old man surnamed Wu, said the retirees would continue to rally against the company unless they received a satisfactory answer to their demands.

Wu, who retired in 2003 after more than 30 years service, said the retirees suspected the company's Maoming office had never reported the dispute to headquarters in Beijing. We will send our appeal to them ourselves, he said.

I worked for this company my whole life and now I am retired. I do this for other workers. I am not just doing this for myself. There is nothing to be afraid of,Wu said.

Faced with bewildering social change and rampant official corruption, ordinary people are increasingly taking their grievances to the streets in China, as the government attempts to reform ailing state-owned enterprises by shedding their social welfare burden.

Disgruntled workers and pensioners say their complaints carry little weight, however, with the large companies and government departments that handle them.