ZAGREB, May 5 (Reuters) - Thousands of Croatian doctors and teachers will go on strike next week to protest a wage freeze the government enforced to combat recession this year, a union leader said on Tuesday.

The strike will come only a week before nationwide local elections on May 17 which will test the rating of the ruling conservative coalition led by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's HDZ party.

Doctors and teachers, who make up three quarters of Croatia's 250,000 strong public sector, have rejected the government's wage freeze, which abolished a previously agreed six-percent pay increase.

To test sentiment, eight major unions held a strike ballot.

"More than 70 percent of union members said yes," Zvonimir Laktasic of the teachers' union said. Between 100,000 and 180,000 doctors and teachers will begin the strike on Monday and rallies will be held at Zagreb's main square in mid-May, state radio said.

Government employees, representing one quarter of public sector workers, accepted the wage freeze plan and signed a collective agreement with the government earlier this year.

The average monthly salary in Croatia, which hopes to join the European Union by 2012, is 5,200 kuna ($940.1) and unemployment in March stood at 15 percent. The government enforced a set of major spending cuts, worth around $1 billion last month to fix the strained public finances. It said it planned to save around 1.4 billion kuna on salaries.

Deputy Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said this week agreeing to union demands for a gradual salary increase would result in a "meltdown of state finances". (Reporting by Ivana Sekularac. Editing by Zoran Radosavljevic and Jon Hemming)

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