Portugal
Two years ago, the elections meant the defeat of the right wing parties and the victory of the Socialist Party.
The measures of diminution of the social state taken by this government went even further than those taken by the previous conservative government. With the demagogic attack on privileges, the government began to close public services, increased taxes and shortened social rights.
The struggle against unemployment transformed into a struggle against the unemployed, accused of being guilty of their own misfortune.
Workers feel the effect of these policies and today they live worst, with more poverty, unemployment and precariousness.

The attack on civil servants and public services

In name of the salvation of the social state, the government began its destruction. It has been proposing that collective contracts will be only for the areas of police, army, judicial system and diplomacy. To employees in all the other areas, including health, education and justice, all admissions will be made through individual contracts. The generalisation of individual contracts, in name of a contractual equality in society, means the privatisation of the work relations and encourages outsourcing within the social functions of the state.

The government is undertaking, in fact, a neoliberal ideological attack of destruction of the role of the State, demolishing even the symbols of social-democracy of the post-war.
For the government it was easier to attack workers of public service focusing its political view in the dogma according to which “there are too much public servants”, the “privileged”, in an ideological and reactionary campaign which got the support of the private sector and divided the workers.

The government speculates with social fear. “It’s better something today than nothing tomorrow” is the ministerial slogan. It works, but it is reactionary. The rejection of this ideological terrorism is the foremost democratic cause of social rights.
In each day there are new measures – each one more harmful than the previous, each one more to the right than the previous.
Against the governmental measures great demonstrations of protest took place. The teacher’s one was the greatest since freedom was achieved in Portugal, in 25 April 1974. The mobilisation of public service workers has been very important to the success of the journeys of protest.

Unemployment and precariousness
In order to save money with workers, the government imposes lower retirement pensions, later and with more time of tax collection.

Unemployment rose again, now to the highest value in 20 years. 458,6 thousand people actively searched for a job, they want to work but they cannot find where.
With the new laws, the unemployment subsidy is now harder to get, easier to lose and will last less time. The younger and more precarious are penalised.

Because of precariousness, generalisation of underhiring and the deliberate and successive mistake in inflation predictions, the average salaries have been diminishing and poverty registers one of the highest numbers of the EU. 2,2 million Portuguese live in risk of poverty and almost 4 million live in risk of poverty before social transfers.

The deregulation of the work laws introduced by the Labour Act set by the previous right-wing government, encouraged bosses to respect even less worker’s rights. The collective hire was directed to obligatory arbitration and the principle of more favourable treatment in the application of collective contracts fell. The collective contracts now have an end date, an expiry date. With its expiry, there are only three rights guaranteed: salary, schedule and professional category. Expiry is today a sword pushing unions against the wall.

In temporary work the government made a law which much satisfies the companies of temporary work. More than 400 000 are exploited – not by one but by two bosses. The illegalities committed by the companies of temporary work are now legalised by a so-called socialist government. Now one can be temporary worker by an undefined period of time.
With flexi-security, in fact flexi-precariousness, with the conclusions of the European green book and the Portuguese green book, the Socialist Party, which presented itself in elections on the left of the conservative work laws, will now have a proposal of new work laws even more conservative than the previous right-wing government .

The struggle in Portugal

In Portugal there is a will to protest. But it lacks enough confidence and mobilisation to impose defeats in governmental policies. The government bet in division of workers. The protests – that’s the level in which social struggle is now – work by impulse or peaks.

The material situation of the struggle has some significant characteristics: it is in the defensive and it doesn’t have elements of counter-attack. The existence of a great number of precarious and unemployed pushes back those who are not. The precarious don’t fight and the others protest but then don’t follow the next steps of the struggle. Unions have a low number of members – and the precarious are still few in there. Each time there are fewer workers with collective contracts and there’s a tendency to the reduction of the number of strikes. Against this tendency there are peaks in companies’ strikes, mostly against closing and end of collective hiring, or in the various sectors of public administration.

Governmental propaganda doesn’t cause the same level of illusion it did, because the policies are starting to affect all sectors, but it makes effect: “you have less so that there can be enough for everybody” or “grab this or there’ll be nothing”. And then some say “this is bad, but there’s nobody who can do better”. All this creates social fear. The masses still not believe in a majority winning alternative to the neoliberal policies of the Socialist Party.

In the current situation in Portugal, we believe the struggle should aim at weakening the government's image and not its own. The street protests have been positive. CGTP (the Portuguese confederation of unions) called for a general strike on May 30th. The moment was still not the better. The negotiations of the collective contracts are over and the process of new work laws didn’t start yet, as well as the Portuguese presidency of the EU. But the Left Bloc respects the independence of the unions and supports the general strike. We state there is a need to widen the protest, to unite the professional sectors, to ask for the support of other social movements, to ask for the support of personalities and to attempt to publicly isolate the government.

The relation with the struggle in

The fact that Portugal takes over the presidency of the EU in the 2nd semester of this year allows it to held an extraordinary “social” summit, under the cover of flexi-security, which will put in the agenda the liberalisation of dismissals and work schedules under the instrument of the respective directive, it’s the prove that the revision of work laws, in Portugal, can only mean more liberalisation and deregulation of rights.
We defend the realisation of a European demonstration, in Portugal, at the same moment of the summit.
The bourgeoisie and the neoliberal elites are creating the political conditions, in Europe and in Portugal, and sustaining them in the Lisbon Strategy.

The debate on flexi-security, in particular in the liberalisation of individual dismissals and the work schedule, will also be an ideological debate about the role of the State and welfare system, about the duties of legal protection of workers, about the social State.

Once again the struggle asks for answers on a European scale, European interconnection of the unions and political answer in the European Parliament stating opposition. Difficult days are foreseen, but we are not defeated in the starting point. As the struggle against Bolkestein Directive showed, it is possible a wide movement of struggle, with social alliances and European mobilisation.
António Chora and Victor Franco
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