“To all the invisible people, those who work from dawn till dusk, we want to say with one voice: now. Now that we are together, now that they are listening to us, now that they see us, let’s end exploitation, let’s change our lives with a vote for BE,” declared Mariana Mortágua during a rally organized by the party at the Associação de Moradores da Bouça in the Porto district.
On the seventh day of the election campaign, Mortágua directly appealed for the votes of those who work, emphasizing that work “defines us every day,” yet it “is not a campaign topic.”
The leader of the Left Bloc argued that “we see the world differently from each workplace,” noting it is “different to view politics from a privileged position, of fortune, of inheritance, or to see the country from the perspective of labor.”
“The right does not know what hard work is, what it means to wake up early, to struggle to reach the end of the month, because they do not see work, they do not see workers, they do not understand what work is,” she accused.
Mortágua criticized a proposal from the Liberal Initiative that aims to reduce the number of administrative employees, arguing that “the problem” is that the party “has no idea what a state worker does because they do not see the work.”
“We see Ms. Isabel, who is an administrative employee at a school and who worked every weekend to ensure that teachers who were repositioned—because we managed to restore their service time—were paid the correct salary, in the correct grade, at the correct time. This is what she does, Dr. Rui Rocha, she processes salaries and ensures the school operates smoothly and that students can attend school,” she stated.
