Cristina Torres, President of the National Union of Local and Regional Administration Workers (STAL), reported at 10:15 PM that there was already 100% adherence at the start of the waste collection shift in locations such as Évora, Setúbal, and Amadora (Lisbon), while Funchal, in Madeira, showed good participation.
“Everything indicates that adhesion will be very strong. I am sure it will be a great day of struggle,” she stated via telephone from the STAL strike picket in Amadora, after attending in Sintra (Lisbon), where workers were “united to start the strike.”
“If the government listens to the workers, what it must do is back down on the intended changes to labor legislation,” Cristina Torres emphasized.
The union leader also highlighted the “very positive result” that the general strike had already achieved by “bringing the true intentions, what is inscribed in the government’s proposal, into public discussion.”
“Workers have come to understand better what is at stake, and understanding, they do not want [the changes to the labor legislation]. The work life is already so hard and difficult that we do not need more measures that complicate life even more, what we need is to improve wages, hours, work conditions, and the dignity of those who work,” she added.
Cristina Torres had previously anticipated on Tuesday that the sectors most affected by this strike would be waste collection, schools, transport under municipal responsibility, and various municipal facilities such as swimming pools, museums, sports pavilions, and libraries.
Also interviewed on Tuesday, the President of the Lisbon Municipal Workers’ Union (STML), Nuno Almeida, stressed the importance of this strike in “stopping the government’s labor package,” forecasting that the most affected sector by the strike would be urban sanitation.
Nuno Almeida also predicted a “strong impact” on schools, especially kindergartens supported by the municipality and parish councils, and pointed to the possible closure of cultural facilities, disruptions in service points, and failures in municipal companies’ services.
However, the STML president noted that minimum services would be ensured in essential sectors such as urban sanitation, cemeteries, sanitation, and civil protection, particularly by the Firefighters Regiment.
The general strike on December 11 was called by the CGTP and UGT against the proposal to revise the Labor Code and will be the first joint strike by the two centers since June 2013, when Portugal was under the intervention of the ‘troika’.
