“Journalists (among the most precarious in Europe) cannot understand how it is possible to increase productivity by reinforcing precariousness, removing job security, and reforming laws to make workers work more at any cost,” argued the Coimbra-based association in a statement to the Lusa news agency.
Highlighting that many journalists cannot join the strike called in response to the Government’s intention to alter more than a hundred articles of the Labor Code, the Propress leadership argued that increased productivity “is linked with working conditions, training, job security, and greater respect for the worker’s life beyond work.”
The association further urged information professionals, “whether on strike or not, to demonstrate that the purported reform of the Labor Code opposes reason, logic, and common sense and will only serve to destroy channels for dialogue and social negotiation.”
The general strike on Thursday against the Government’s draft labor law reform will be the first to bring together the two union federations, CGTP and UGT, since June 2013, when Portugal was under the ‘troika’ intervention.
The proposed changes in the Government’s labor law reform target various areas, such as parenthood, dismissals, extension of contract terms, and sectors that will now be subject to minimum services in case of a strike.
