José Abraão, general secretary of the Federation of Public Administration Unions (Fesap), said this Thursday, November 20, that the general strike scheduled for December 11 is “timely” and comes at the “right time”.
After the general strike notice was approved by “unanimity and acclamation” by the national secretariat of Fesap, affecting the UGT, the general secretary responded in this way to the Minister of Labor, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho, who considered the strike “untimely” while negotiations are still taking place in the Social Concertation.
“The Government’s labor reform proposal is untimely”, said José Abraão at a press conference in Lisbon, calling for conditions to be created “for the government to back down”, in a proposal that “is untimely, unjustified”, and “so that we can still move towards restoring negotiations for a tripartite agreement, within the framework of Social Concertation”.
Noting that the assessment of the strike served the Prime Minister to say that the unions are “at the service of some of the PS, others of the PC”, the general secretary of Fesap asked the head of the Government to “respect the autonomy of the union movement”, where decisions are taken “without being at the service of anyone”.
“I appeal to the Prime Minister not to join us with party forces or presidential candidates,” he said.
“This reform comes out of time, in a context of economic growth, financial stability and strength of the job market”, reads the resolution approved by the Fesap secretariat.
From individual time banks to fixed-term contracts, from layoffs to outsourcing, from parenting to professional training, these are the main changes that lead Fesap to consider the Government’s labor reform proposal as “untimely, unreasonable and unjustified”.
The union leader also considered unacceptable the non-replacement of the three days of vacation taken by the PSD/CDS government of Passos Coelho, as well as the five days of “cold” vacation as long as they were taken outside the summer period.
“We cannot allow the right to work to be commodified in our country, dismissing people with almost no rules”, he stressed.
Minutes before delivering the strike notice to the Ministry of Labor, José Abraão also said he hoped that the protest on the 11th would be a “big strike”, with a “great support” from workers, and that it would be one of the biggest “in recent years”.
“We will be at the strike on the 11th” called by the UGT “very committed, very determined, and hoping that it will be one of the big strikes that have taken place in recent years”, he reaffirmed.
Fesap brings together 45 union organizations from all areas of State Administration.
The general strike on December 11th against the Government’s draft reform of labor legislation will be the first strike to bring together the two unions, CGTP and UGT, since June 2013, when Portugal was under intervention by the ‘troika’.