Maria Ferreira, 67 years old, Loures, cardiac arrest at 9:23 am.
The husband called 112, the operator registered the emergency, the protocol was activated.
But Thursday, December 11th, is general strike day.
INEM announced a strike. Then he retreated — because he realized that there are strikes that can kill.
What if he didn’t back down? Who would respond to the family? Who would have told the widower that the ambulance didn’t come because the technicians were on strike?
There are services that cannot stop, even when they have every reason in the world to stop.
The Law That Kills
The right to strike is constitutional, unrenounceable, won through struggle. Nobody discusses this.
But when INEM goes on strike, when the emergency services stop, when the ambulances don’t leave, the person who pays the price is not the Government — it’s the citizen who needs help and is left alone.
The Constitution imposes minimum services for “impermeable social needs”.
But who defines this minimum when the difference between life and death is at stake?
Stopping a medical emergency is not stopping a factory. When an ambulance does not arrive, there is a preventable death.
The right to strike cannot be the right to kill by omission.
And if this is true for health, why isn’t it, for example, for justice?
Thursday in the Courts
If INEM backed down, the courts did not back down.
Thursday, general strike. Friday, sectoral strikes continue in court.
As President of the Bar Association, I see the impact every day: Pedro, 34 years old, in pre-trial detention for seven months, trial scheduled for Thursday.
Postponed.
Go back to the cell.
Ana, a victim of domestic violence, gathered courage for months to testify. He asked his boss for two days of vacation. He arrived at court Thursday morning. Strike. When will it be rescheduled?
Maybe in six months, if there’s a vacancy.
José, accused for three years of a crime he says he didn’t commit, sees the process drag on even longer.
In a previous strike, more than 21 thousand procedures were postponed.
Twenty-one thousand people waiting — defendants arrested, victims terrified, witnesses losing days of pay.
In justice, there are no overtime hours that make up for lost time.
There are just more congested schedules and processes that already took years.
The Transport Trap
But there is another perverse dimension: even those who decide to work often cannot.
General strike means transport stoppage.
Metro stopped, trains cancelled, buses not running. Carlos, a nurse at Santa Maria hospital, wants to work on Thursday. Lives in Sintra, doesn’t have a car. How do you get to the hospital?
It’s not enough.
João, a judicial employee, disagrees with the strike. Lives in Amadora, works at the Lisbon Court. Transport is stopped. It’s not that he doesn’t want to work — he physically can’t get there.
This is the perfect trap: the transport strike prevents anyone who wants to work from doing so, even without pickets, even without direct pressure. It’s indirect blocking.
It is forcing a strike due to the practical impossibility of breaking it.
And it transforms the right to strike into a universal obligation, even for those who disagree, even for those who need that day’s salary, even for those who work in essential services.
When One Right Overrides Another
The right to strike exists. But the right of access to the courts also exists.
The right to freedom of those awaiting trial as well. When one cancels the other, we are faced with a collision that the system cannot resolve.
Is a defendant in pre-trial detention for eight months worth less than a judicial officer’s legitimate salary claim?
Is a terrified woman worth less than protesting against poor working conditions?
The answer has to be no.
Not because the workers aren’t right — they often are. But because there are fundamental rights that cannot be held hostage by labor conflicts.
The freedom of those awaiting trial cannot depend on salary negotiations.
Victim protection cannot stop because there is a strike on Friday.
And there is another issue that no one mentions: workers who want to work but are prevented from doing so.
Pickets, pressure, the word “scab” thrown around as an insult.
Does a judicial official who wants to ensure that prisoner hearings take place betray colleagues or defend fundamental rights?
Is an INEM technician who wants to save lives on a strike a traitor or a professional?
The right to strike cannot nullify the right to work.
Strategic Fridays
Fifth general strike, sixth sectoral strikes. Coincidence?
Fridays are a union strategy — they build bridges with weekends, maximize disruption.
It is a tactic that stops being work-related and becomes political.
But when it affects essential services, the damage is not political — it is human.
Defendants who spend more days in pre-trial detention.
Victims of violence who are unable to testify.
Patients who were almost left without an ambulance.
The Government survives the strike. They don’t.
The Decision That Portugal Avoids
Can INEM go on strike?
Can courts close with defendants in prison?
The answer is uncomfortable but it has to be said: they cannot stop completely.
Not because these workers are worth less, but because there are lives and freedoms that don’t wait.
If this means that they have fewer instruments of struggle, then the State has a greater obligation to listen to them, negotiate and resolve problems before the only way out is to stop.
The solution involves mandatory arbitration in essential services or binding preventive negotiation — mechanisms that protect the right to strike without nullifying the fundamental rights of third parties.
It involves guaranteeing minimum transport so that those who want to work can get there.
Pass zero tolerance for intimidating pickets.
Maria was lucky. INEM retreated.
But Pedro, Ana and José didn’t have it.
And tomorrow, when the next strike paralyzes everything, the next Maria could be your mother.
And you won’t be able to get to the hospital to help her.
The strike is right.
Working is too.
Let us choose.