“We are totally against this revision to the labor package, we believe it represents a huge social setback, in just one revision of the legislative package, workers’ achievements and rights are nullified over many years,” stated Hélder Santinhos, president of SPAC, in a statement.
The SPAC leader noted that some of the changes that the Minister of Labour, Rosário Palma Ramalho, intends to introduce in labor legislation also affect pilots and could even “jeopardize the safety of operations due to increased precariousness.”
“The minister now intends to implement measures inspired by Nordic models of work flexibility, but without the equivalent security that these Nordic countries have, due to higher salaries and also higher social protections,” emphasized Hélder Santinhos.
According to Santinhos, the problem of the Portuguese economy does not lie in workers’ rights, but in the “excessive taxes” applied to companies that, consequently, “cannot pay decent wages.”
Regarding the general strike called by the CGTP and UGT trade unions for December 11, SPAC maintains “some hope that the Minister of Labour will take a step back to then take two steps forward. In other words, to start negotiations in the right way, not by force as she attempted.”
If this does not happen, he added, a pilots’ assembly will be convened to decide on joining the strike or not.
The general strike on December 11 was announced by the Secretary-General of CGTP, Tiago Oliveira, at the end of the national march against the labor package on November 8, which brought thousands of workers to Avenida da Liberdade in Lisbon to protest against the changes proposed by Luis Montenegro’s government.
Days later, UGT unanimously approved the decision to move forward in convergence with CGTP, including the favorable vote of the Social Democratic Workers (TSD).
This will be the first strike to unite the two trade unions since June 2013, when Portugal was under ‘troika’ intervention.
The changes envisaged in the government proposal introduced on July 24 as a “profound” revision of labor legislation aim to revise more than a hundred articles of the Labor Code, covering areas from parenthood (with changes in parental leave, breastfeeding, and gestational mourning) to flexible work, training in companies, or the trial period of employment contracts, also proposing an extension of sectors subject to minimum services in case of strike.
