Portugal poised for general strike
By John Catalinotto
Tens of thousands of workers marched in seven major cities
in Portugal on Nov. 30 in preparation for a major general
strike on Dec. 10.
The General Workers Confederation of Portugal (CGTP) has
called the strike to beat back what it calls "a broad and
violent offensive" against workers' fundamental rights that
have been won through years of struggle and great
sacrifice.
The right-wing government, made up of the Social Democratic
and Popular parties, is trying to carry out a policy of
increased privatization of health care and education, cuts in
social security and an end to policies protecting workers'
jobs.
The CGTP sees the government policies as leading to a
general increase in prices, decrease of purchasing power for
wage earners, destruction of the system of public and universal
social security, and weakening health care and education.
As in most industrialized countries, the technological
changes over the past few decades have brought about
significant changes in the working class. There is no longer
the same concentration of industrial workers and farm workers
as there was a generation ago, but there are more office
workers
While these changes have reduced in number what were the
strongest labor unions, there is still strong unionization in
Portugal and strong working-class support for the Communist
Party (PCP), which is supporting the general strike.
Still, a general strike is a serious challenge of worker
consciousness and combativeness. To assess the mood, there have
now been two "test" struggles.
The unions carried out a one-day stoppage by public service
workers on Nov. 14.
Then on Nov. 30, demonstrations of all organized workers
took place in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, Faro, Evora, Aveiro and
Setubal, numbering in the thousands in each city.
The boss-owned media did their best to minimize the
importance of these demonstrations. One late-night, 60-minute
television news show gave just three minutes of coverage 45
minutes into its programming.
The next big test will be on Dec. 10, the date the union set
for the general strike. This is the fourth general strike since
the April 1974 revolution that finally overthrew the fascist
government installed during capitalism's great depression of
the 1930s.
Reprinted from the Dec. 12, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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