More than 200 people gathered in front of the CIP – Confederação Empresarial de Portugal (Portuguese Business Confederation) in Lisbon today to demand better wages and working conditions for industrial workers.
According to the coordinator of Fiequimetal (Inter-union Federation of the Metallurgical, Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Electrical, Energy and Mining Industries), Rogério Silva, the workers are demanding a 15% rise and at least 150 euros “to cope with the increase in the cost of living”.
“We want the CIP to tell the employers’ associations in our sectors of activity to negotiate, because we want to negotiate,” he said, adding that they will not, however, agree to “unregulated working hours, time banks, adaptability or absolute power for the boss to decide everyone’s life”.
In this sense, he pointed out that what they are demanding is what is “rightfully fair”.
The CGTP’s general secretary, Isabel Camarinha, noted that 14% of companies’ costs come from salaries. “Can’t they increase that figure to 15% or 16%?” she asked rhetorically.
“We are here at the door of the CIP, just as we have been at the door of hundreds of companies and hundreds of government departments, demanding this alternative policy that guarantees, in fact, the valorization of work, workers, salaries, careers and professions and the negotiation of effective collective bargaining,” she said.
During the protest action, a motion was presented and voted on – unanimously in favor – to be taken to the CIP.
The motion called for wage rises of 15% and not less than 150 euros, the promotion of workers, the harmonization of working hours and the negotiation of effective collective bargaining.
After it had been delivered, and while members of Fiequimetal’s member unions were speaking, the president of CIP, Armindo Monteiro, came down from the confederation’s headquarters, to loud whistles from the demonstrators.
According to Rogério Silva, the president of CIP questioned some of the representatives, whom he invited for a chat.
Among the many demonstrators, Lúcia Silva, who has worked at Visteon Portugal for 30 years, considered that given the company’s profits, it is able to afford increases of more than the 30 or 40 proposed.
“We want more, we need more. They make profits, they have to share them with us, that’s what brings us here,” defended the worker from the company that operates in the electrical materials sector.
Visteon workers have already presented a list of demands and are now waiting for a response from the company in order to “start negotiations in earnest”, after having managed to negotiate an increase from 40 to 80 euros in 2023.
Fernando Prudêncio, from a plastics company for food products, has been working in the sector for almost 20 years and, despite having gotten raises of 150 euros in two consecutive years – after nine years of a freeze – he was in Lisbon “to support others who haven’t gotten a raise yet, or who have gotten a raise of five euros, which is derisory”.
Fernando Prudêncio regretted that the current situation in the sectors was “quite bad for young people”.
“Precariousness is hitting young people hard, they want to make a life for themselves, they want to start their lives, they don’t have a secure job,” he lamented.
