Portuguese Communist Party

1. The PCP considers it necessary to assess the impact of the epidemic outbreak, in its various dimensions, on the situation of women, on the relationship between their professional activity and family life, and take measures to stop the deterioration of living and working conditions and enforce their rights.
In the last three months there has been an increase in inequalities, discrimination and violence that affect most women.

The right to adequate housing for all is an imperative and a right enshrined in article 65 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.
A right however, which except during the period of great popular mobilisation soon after 25th. April did not hold the centrality that the Constitution gives it as a universal right by successive governments throughout the 46 years of democracy.

Exceptional times demand exceptional measures and urgent responses to defend workers' rights, wages and income and guarantee their social protection.

Over the past 3 months we have had clear examples of how the virus has been used as an excuse for brutal trampling of labour rights:

• Wild dismissals of thousands of workers; today there are over 100,000 unemployed registered workers;
• Placing workers on forced vacations and imposing long working hours without paying overtime;
• Unilateral change in working hours;
• Cuts in wages and other incomes;

First of all, on behalf of the Central Committee, please allow me to greet our whole Party, its organisations, all the militants who in companies, in workplaces, in cities, towns and villages, in class-oriented and associative movements, in the various institutions, in Local and Regional Government, in the Assembly of the Republic and in the European Parliament, who, in these difficult times of epidemic outbreak, wherever necessary, fulfil their role and our duty to uphold the interests of the workers and people.