Workers can celebrate the 1st of May today by participating in several street initiatives that the CGTP is promoting in various parts of the country and the UGT, in Lisbon, where the main motto is the demand for better wages and pensions.
TheCGTP hopes to carry out on Workers’ Day “a great day of national struggle, with workers filling the streets and squares from north to south of Portugal and in the autonomous regions”.
The commemorations promoted by Isabel Camarinha’s inter-union are under the slogan “More salary, more rights, better pensions! Against the rising cost of living”.
Workers will affirm “their strength” and “indignation” by demanding higher salaries and pensions and immediate measures to combat the rising cost of living, such as the setting of price caps on essential goods and services and extraordinary taxation “on the colossal profits of large companies,” says the CGTP.
Strengthening public services and social functions of the State and guaranteeing the right to housing “confronting capital and employers” and demanding the Government “measures that value work and workers” are other demands of the CGTP.
The CGTP commemorations for May Day, in Lisbon, will start in the morning, with the traditional 1st of May international race, with start and finish at the 1st of May Stadium.
In the afternoon, starting at 2:30 pm, CGTP will promote the traditional parade between Martim Moniz and Alameda D. Afonso Henriques, where a union rally will take place and will have Isabel Camarinha, general secretary of the central trade union, as the main speaker.
In Oporto, a demonstration is planned, in the afternoon, at Avenida dos Aliados, where the coordinator of the Oporto Union of Trade Unions and member of the Executive Committee of the CGTP, Tiago Oliveira, will speak.
Demonstrations, plenary sessions, popular festivals, sport competitions and exhibitions are planned in about 30 locations, including the district capitals, Azores and Madeira.
In turn, UGT will celebrate again this year the 1st of May at the Belém Tower, in Lisbon, in a concentration that, according to the union central, “will gather hundreds of union leaders and workers for a great celebration”.
“Given the increase in the cost of living, UGT and its unions will reaffirm their determination in the fight for more and better wages, for more social dialogue, for decent pensions and for more job opportunities for young people”, announces the union central, led by Mário Mourão, in a press release.
The central trade union commemorations start with the 6th UGT Race, at 10:30 am, at Passeio Carlos do Carmo, in Belém riverside area and the concentration goes to the gardens of Belém Tower, where several activities are scheduled.
The political-union speeches of UGT’s president, Lucinda Dâmaso, and of UGT’s secretary-general, Mário Mourão, are scheduled for early afternoon, in Belém.
Last year, UGT marked the Workers’ Day with a conference, in Lisbon, on “Trade Unionism and Youth” and the “Challenges of the World of Work” and, in the two previous years, it celebrated the date in a virtual way due to the covid-19 pandemic.
The 1st of May, International Workers’ Day, had its origins in the events in Chicago 137 years ago, when a day of struggle for the reduction of working hours to eight hours was violently repressed by the authorities of the United States of America, who killed dozens of workers and sentenced four union leaders to the gallows.