In a National March that took place last November 21-25th, called by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP-IN), thousands of workers demonstrated throughout the country, showing their complete indignation towards the right-wing policies of the PSD/CDS government that is only exploiting and impoverishing the country.
This march culminated in Lisbon, on November 25th, when the State Budget was voted in the National Parliament, with the participation of thousands of workers from the districts of Lisbon and Setúbal, in a combative demonstration of unequivocal rejection of the State Budget for 2015.
PCP’s General-secretary was present to demonstrate, as he referred, the solidarity “with those who are here today fighting against a further grave act by the government, the approval of the State Budget for 2015”. Jerónimo de Sousa underlined that “this budget will accentuate injustice, the impoverishment of the Portuguese and maintains as ordinary that which was considered extraordinary and provisional, the cuts in wages, retirement pension and other pensions, and in the tax burden. A budget that will force this country backwards and increase inequalities and injustices”.
A State Budget that continues to persecute public employees, the retired and beneficiaries of social benefits; continue the cuts in retirement pensions and other pensions; continue the inhumane cuts in social benefits; continues in infamous cut in the pension benefits of the transport workers; continues the increase of taxation upon work incomes and the scandalous fiscal benefits to capital profits; continues the IRS overtax; continues the absurd 23% VAT rate on restaurants, gas, electricity and other goods of primary necessity; invents new taxes with a green cover to steel even more from contributors. A budget that continues to degrade the social function of the State further erodes making the worker’s and people’s rights of access to health, education and teaching, justice, social protection under unemployment and sickness. Portuguese who have work or worked an entire life are paying increasingly more for increasingly less.
In the National Parliament, PCP voted against the State Budget and gave voice to the defense of better working conditions for Portuguese workers and people, reaffirming the imperative objectives of an alternative policy, Patriotic and Left-wing, that PCP defends: “renegotiate de debt, increase national production, recover the State’s control over strategic companies, value wages and pensions, tax relief over work incomes and increased tax burden over the profits of big capital, defend and recover public services and the social functions of the State, affirm national sovereignty and national interests as a priority”.
