Hundreds of people started walking up Avenida Almirante Reis towards Alameda Afonso Henriques, in Lisbon, to mark May Day.
“May 1st, increase salaries and pensions, guarantee rights” and “Fight exploitation, April for a Portugal with a future” are the slogans at the head of a march that CGTP general secretary Tiago Oliveira wants to be a demonstration to workers that the values of April are just as present as they were 50 years ago.
Speaking to journalists, Tiago Oliveira recalled last week’s demonstration in Lisbon to mark the 50th anniversary of the “great achievement of April 25, which the 1st of May confirmed”.
That’s why he said he expected “a big May Day” today, also justified by the “low-wage perspective” contained in the program of the new Democratic Alliance (AD) government
“With the government making life difficult for workers,” he added, “they are going to show with this demonstration that a better life is possible.
Workers’ Day is being celebrated across the country today, with the CGTP and UGT trade union federations holding demonstrations and initiatives to promote workers’ rights.
May 1st, International Workers’ Day, has its origins in the events in Chicago 137 years ago, when a day of struggle to reduce working hours to eight hours was violently repressed by the US authorities, who killed dozens of workers and sentenced four union leaders to be hanged.
Fifty years ago in Portugal, the celebration of May 1st, just a week after the April 25th revolution, was a huge popular demonstration.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets showing their joy and demanding ‘the right to strike’, ‘an end to the war now’ or ‘the return of the soldiers’, according to photographs from the time.
In Lisbon, an estimated 500,000 people attended the 1974 May Day demonstration.
