Workers at the Autoeuropa Industrial Park, in Palmela, district of Setúbal, approved this Tuesday, 2nd, a motion in support of the general strike on December 11th in a plenary session attended by the general secretaries of CGTP/IN and UGT.
According to the coordinator of the Industrial Park Workers’ Committees, Daniel Bernardino, the motion unanimously approved by the approximately 900 to 1,000 workers who participated in the plenary meeting, is a sign of commitment to the fight against the Government’s labor package.
“We are willing to prolong the fight to defend our interests by attacking workers in this way with this labor package. The first defense will be from the general strike on the 11th. Before that it was this organization, of unity between the trade unions and Workers’ Committees. It is a message of unity that we want to transmit to the country, to fight against this labor package”, said Daniel Bernardino.
“There is a huge risk that, in ‘outsourcing’ companies, workers will lose rights when there is a transfer of establishment. It is very serious. We have already had some examples here and workers managed to maintain these rights. Then we have the issue of the person being fired and not being reinstated. It is the most serious thing we can have for those who work”, added the coordinator of the Workers’ Committees of the Autoeuropa Industrial Park.
For the coordinator of CGTP/IN, Tiago Oliveira, who attended the plenary held this morning with Autoeuropa, “what the Government is doing is presenting a labor package that is profoundly negative for the world of work”.
“We are talking about the perpetuation of precariousness, we are talking about an attack on the deregulation of working hours, the facilitation of dismissals, an attack on the right to strike, the prevention of unions from entering workplaces. All of this is part of a package of more than 100 measures that the Government presented”, said Tiago Oliveira.
An idea corroborated by the general secretary of UGT, Mário Mourão, who considers the Government’s proposal to change labor laws as “a civilizational setback that seeks to make those who work even more precarious”.
“I believe that there is no worker in this country who is not affected by the negative measures that this reform contains and that, therefore, there must be an appropriate response. This plenary that took place today here at the Autoeuropa Industrial Park demonstrated the mobilization and participation of workers, which means that workers are understanding well what this labor reform means and how it will affect them”, he said.
Confronting one of the arguments made by defenders of the labor reform proposed by the Government, that young people are no longer as concerned about job security as in the past, Mário Mourão argued that it is precisely because of the lack of job security that many young people leave the country.
“They leave the country precisely because the country is unable to give them a fair salary, nor create conditions for them to settle in our country, to raise a family, with the difficulties they have, either in acquiring or renting housing. With low wages they can never have housing”, he said.
If the Government maintains the proposal to change labor laws as it stands after the general strike on December 11, CGTP and UGT guarantee that they will not give up and will continue to fight to defend workers’ rights.