Luís Montenegro stated that the Government has the ambition to increase the minimum wage and the average wage above the targets set by the Government. At the end of the 10th Congress of PSD Mayors, the prime minister tried to deflate the arguments of those who contest the labor reform proposed by the executive and which led the trade unions to call a general strike for next Thursday.
The CGTP considers that the Prime Minister’s statement that the labor review will increase the minimum wage to 1,600 euros is “a desperate act” and “an insult” to the 2.5 million workers earning less than 1,000 euros.
This Saturday, in Porto, the prime minister and president of the PSD, stating that he wants the minimum wage to be “1,500 or 1,600 euros” and the average salary to be “2,500, 2,800 or 3,000 euros”, reviewing the values mentioned last Friday, when he had suggested taking advantage of the change in labor laws to raise the minimum wage to 1,500 euros and the average to 2,000 or 2,500 euros.
For the CGTP trade union, Montenegro’s statements and the revision of salary targets on two consecutive days are “a desperate act” related to the “growing support for the December 11 general strike” and also “an insult” to millions of people who work for a salary of less than 1,000 euros gross (before taxes).
“The Prime Minister’s juggling of words and numbers is an insult to the more than 2.5 million workers, who have a gross monthly base salary of less than 1,000 euros, to one in five children who are poor because their parents’ income is not sufficient”, states the CGTP.
The union center also considers the statements “an insult” to “the 1.3 million workers who have a precarious employment relationship or to the 1.9 million workers who work on Saturdays, Sundays or holidays, in the evening or late into the night, who lack time and better conditions to live”.
CGTP reiterates that the labor package that the Government wants to carry out is “constructed from the perspective and at the service of the employer’s interests”.
For the trade union federation, the change in laws facilitates dismissals, facilitates precariousness (by extending the term of contracts and reducing the presumption of an employment relationship), further deregulates working hours (starting with the return of the individual time bank) and individualizes the work relationship (starting with weakening collective contracting, agreements between unions and companies that define working conditions such as wages, hours, etc.).
Furthermore, from their perspective, the right to strike is restricted by expanding the scope of minimum services and conditioning the exercise of freedom of association.
The CGTP wants the Government to “remove this labor package proposal” from the discussion, considering it to be “a true assault on workers’ rights”, and defends that the discussion be carried out with a view to “improving living and working conditions”, said the general secretary, Tiago Oliveira, in an interview with Lusa.
The CGTP and UGT called a general strike for December 11, in response to the draft law reforming labor legislation, in the first strike to bring together the two unions since June 2013, when Portugal was under intervention by the ‘troika’.
