Luís Montenegro’s desperate statements about future increases in the minimum wage and average wage clearly show two things. One, that the Prime Minister knows how and how much his policy attacks and degrades the living conditions of workers and the people in general. Another, that the Prime Minister is worried about the response that will be given to the general strike on December 11th.
Not wanting to change policy and maintaining his position of defending interests that are antagonistic to the interests of workers and the people, the Prime Minister is left to try to stop the wind with his hands with desperate statements like those he made.
These statements also reveal the importance of the general strike itself and all the work that has been done around its implementation, with the mobilization of workers based on their concrete demands and the response to their needs.
The call for a general strike brought to the surface problems and difficulties that workers face on a daily basis. In many circumstances, these are problems and difficulties that are far from the media agenda, erased by the criteria that make the froth of the day issues of prominence and relegate to invisibility what is truly relevant.
Precarious employment, deregulation and increased working hours, threats of dismissal, disarticulation between professional and family life, restrictions on the exercise of labor and social rights, devaluation of careers, weakening of labor rights enshrined in collective bargaining, are some of the many concerns that affect the lives of millions of Portuguese workers.
Behind these difficulties there is a policy that generates them. A policy of benefits and privileges for large economic interests that serves their objectives of accumulating profits. A policy that makes workers a disposable part of a machine of exploitation and their lives a litany of inequalities, misery and hardships.
The Prime Minister knows that his policy dehumanizes work and those who work and becomes increasingly unsustainable for those who are victims of it.
You know that the call for the general strike has already made it possible to achieve a first victory with the centrality and public visibility it gave to the problems experienced by workers.
You know that in Portuguese society there is a clear notion of these problems experienced firsthand by workers but also by those who are indirectly affected by exploitation and the degradation of working conditions, particularly in access to public services.
And the Prime Minister senses that the general strike will constitute a powerful response from workers in rejecting this policy, which has one of its most perverse parts in the labor package but which extends to many other issues and areas of national life.
The general strike belongs to workers and must count on the general solidarity of the Portuguese people. It is good that her Government learns the lessons it must learn.
Member of the European Parliament
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