The most recent figures available in the Directorate-General for Employment and Labor Relations (DGERT) strike statistics are those from January this year – and they are not misleading. No comparison has been possible in the past ten years. The number of strike announcements rose to 204. That is four times more than in the same month of 2022. And almost six times more than in January 2021. And 2.5 times more than in the most troubled January of the past decade, that of 2020 With in other words: the figures clearly show that the social climate has changed.
The turmoil is here to stay. And with the emergence of new trade unions, such as the S.TO.P., which manages to mobilize tens of thousands of education system workers (educational and non-educational) in strikes and demonstrations, the former more conventional trade union organizations feel obliged to gas and come to the street. Gone are the days of union agreements with the PS government, in the time of the “apparatus”.
It is in this context of growing social tensions that the Common Front of the Public Administration Trade Unions – one of the main trade union structures of the CGTP – is today promoting a strike, with predictable disturbances in the education, health, central and local sectors Services. And that tomorrow the trade union center will promote a demonstration in Lisbon.
Its leader, Sebastião Santana, has already shown himself quite optimistic: “We are waiting for a massive following,” he said, adding that “central government departments, local authorities, health services, among others, will be affected, because the claims are fair”.
As he predicted at a press conference a few days ago, “strong compliance” was seen in schools, even leading to their closure. “Public administration workers have been losing purchasing power for decades, the government is not responding, we have a general impoverishment of workers in the country,” he said, quoted by Lusa. And he added that the Common Front education unions, representing non-teaching workers, made advance announcements for the strike on the 17th and that there was no contestation of the proposed minimum services for schools, but ” there are attempts to impose other strikes”. “We are talking about pre-notifications only targeting the 17th, there was no challenge to the minimum services proposed by the Common Front unions in this sector, so we are not waiting for a council or a school principal to impose minimum services for this day”, reinforced.
The marked deterioration in protests, as reflected in the DGERT’s January figures on strike announcements, also comes as suggestions for changes to the strike law are beginning to be heard. And these suggestions have been made even at the highest level in the state hierarchy.
Last week, in the joint interview with RTP/Public marking his seven years in office, the President of the Republic, faced with the strikes of the S.TO.P. and with, for example, the new method of intermittent interruptions, proposed regulatory changes, “to make people’s lives predictable”. In other words, there are “new struggles” that represent “an entirely new reality” and these new struggles “are not disciplined” by what “must be provided for by law.”
The right of initiative, the president added, should come from the government or from the parties in parliament. Now the watchword in the government is not to change anything – at least for the time being – and the same is happening in the central parties (PS and PSD), not to mention, apparently, in the parties to the left of the PS, which also refuse changes. In trade union federations, this is also an idea no one wants to hear about, even if the new struggles waged by independent unions challenge the power of conventional unionism.
And just as new forms of struggle are emerging, the protests are also reaching sectors that previously seemed untouchable. Yesterday, for example, private health sector nurses demonstrated in a one-day strike — and bosses responded by providing “big bargaining power” to accept the demands.
The protests are also reaching the media sector. Lusa workers approved a four-day strike, between April 30 and April 2. The TVI employees also planned a strike last Wednesday, but they canceled it in view of a new salary proposal from the administration.
Source: DN
