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Portugal: General strike challenges anti-worker policies

Published Jun 11, 2007 12:12 AM

Portuguese workers shut down much of the local transport, government services and schools in the country and seriously cut services in hospitals and production in private corporations during a 24-hour political general strike on May 30. The strike of 1.4 million was the latest step in a series of protests against the government’s anti-worker policies, actions which included huge demonstrations in October 2006 and last March 2.


PCP leader Jerónimo de Sousa meets
with striking workers.
Photo: Avante

The CGTP-IN, the most militant of the labor confederations and one considered closest to the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), called the strike, which was directed at the “neo-liberal” policies of the two-year-old government led by Premier José Sócrates of the Socialist Party (PS).

Like most of the parties in Europe that call themselves socialist, the PS has abandoned any connection with real socialism or even with winning reformist concessions for the working class. The PS has been administering the government on behalf of the biggest capitalists, closing healthcare clinics and schools, removing safeguards that protected workers’ jobs and opening the road for greater corporate profits.

At a news conference on the evening of the strike, Jerónimo de Sousa, general secretary of the PCP, called the action “the greatest day of struggle that this government has ever had to confront.” He added that the strike “constituted a tremendous expression of the deep grounds of discontent and popular protest and a clear affirmation of the need for change” in government policy. (Avante, June 1)

Economic statistics illuminate the reasons for the discontent. Some 8 percent of the workers are unemployed, the highest figure in 20 years. In addition, Portugal has one of the greatest gaps in income between rich and poor. “The wealthiest one-fifth of the country’s 10.2 million people hold around 46 percent of the national wealth, while the poorest one-fifth live in poverty.” (IPS, May 30)

As de Sousa put it, “The situation of the country has reached an unbearable point for the workers and the general population.” And that’s why “the May 30 general strike is a great strike, with a strong participation in the entire country and in all sectors and activities.”

It’s rare that a general strike is 100 percent effective. In this one, workers faced the threat of losing their jobs, a hostile government and a negative climate of high unemployment. Also, the top leadership of the UGT—the union confederation closest to the PS—tried to undermine the strike, although individual unions in the UGT supported it. Under those conditions, it is significant that such a high proportion of the working class participated.

But the PCP leader had to make his case energetically, because the government tried to use spin and the collaboration of the corporate media to underplay the effectiveness of the strike.

The editors of the progressive Portuguese website, Odiario.info, responded to an attempt by the government to claim that only 13 percent participated in the public sector and less in the private:

“The images transmitted by the television stations showed that these assertions were ridiculous. The metro in Lisbon and the suburb across the Tagus River stopped. The majority of the courts and thousands of schools did not function at all. Local governments were almost completely paralyzed. In the large hospitals only minimum service was available.”

After naming a list of the larger plants that were shut, the editorial continued: “The government lied to the country. ... The perverse media, an accomplice of the regime, led a disinformation campaign that was unable to hide the reality. Through the general strike, the Portuguese people have condemned the neo-liberal policies of the most aggressive government that the people have had to put up with since April 25,”—the day in 1974 when a decades-old fascist regime was overthrown.

E-mail: [email protected]