The life of the workers, the reality of the Country, and the ongoing attack on their rights through the Labour package: this is the theme of the parliamentary question we are putting to the Government today.
A process that takes place against a backdrop of growing hardship for the general public, who are facing rising prices that threaten to persist and worsen, increasing difficulties in accessing public services, particularly healthcare, and difficulties in accessing housing due to speculation encouraged by the Government.
In other words, as if life’s difficulties were not already great enough, here we have this plan to increase exploitation.
I cannot fail to emphasise that, given the subject matter, the absence from this debate of the Minister for Labour will be registered for future memory. She has time to go about selling this piece of social regression, yet, despite having the time, she shied away from the debate on the aberration that the Labour package is.
And she shied away from the debate because the Labour package proposal is indefensible, and whenever the Minister for Labour speaks about it, she only adds reasons to reject it.
In fact, the Labour package not only fails to solve but actually exacerbates all the problems we face today.
As for what is wrong with the current labour law, zero – not a single measure – and yet there is so much that needs to be changed for the good of the Country, in terms of productivity, competitiveness, national production and, above all, the lives of those who work, of those who keep the Country running, of those who create all the wealth.
Not only does the Labour package fail to change anything that is already wrong with the current labour law, but every change it introduces serves only to make conditions for workers even worse.
The few supporters of this attack on workers have concocted a narrative that they repeat ad nauseam, and some have even gone so far as to start believing their own propaganda.
Most certainly we will hear some of these narratives during this debate:
“We need a transformative, modern, dynamic agenda.” Productivity here, competitiveness there, flexibility over there – these are the wages that will one day come in a tomorrow that never arrives. All of it is just talk, and nonsense at that, if we look closely:
“Labour law is one of the strictest in Europe” – yet another headline full of untruths, without any basis and, unfortunately, bearing no relation to reality.
“It was the current laws that brought us the scourge of precariousness, and those who don’t want to change the law are in favour of precariousness”
Yes, it was the current laws in force, passed by the PSD, the CDS and their allies, together with the PS, that have brought us to the situation we now face.
And now the question is whether the fight against the scourge of precariousness involves making that very precariousness the norm and perpetuating it forever, with all that this entails.
Precariousness in labour is the precariousness of housing, of family life, of life itself.
Your Labour package actually wants precariousness and instability to be the “new normal” in the lives of workers and young people.
Your so-called “modern” Labour package provides for the expansion of grounds for fixed-term contracts and ensures that workers who have never had a permanent contract may be stuck forever in precarious employment; it allows for immediate collective dismissals; outsourcing – the outsourcing which has already so clearly proved its impact in increasing precariousness and low wages, in the attack on rights, in even greater pressure on wages, and in even greater difficulties in responding, as witnessed during the storms; even more tellingly, it worsens conditions for temporary work – as if things weren’t bad enough – and for so-called “green receipts” (freelancers), the vast majority of which are fake “green receipts”, workers labelled as self-employed who are only so because they are not given an employment contract.
Let everyone think of themselves, their children and grandchildren to foresee the future.
They say the Labour package is designed to boost productivity and, in a future that will never arrive, to increase wages, but in reality, by making precarious employment the norm, what they are doing is making low wages even more widespread, not least because those in precarious employment earn on average 20% less than other workers, even if they work the same hours, do the same work and in the same workplace.
They say it is to increase productivity, but they know that this cannot be achieved without investment, technology, training, valuing and respecting workers, and measures to retain professionals in our Country.
To increase productivity, we need to do everything the Government does not want to do, and certainly not with the measures in the labour package.
With precarious workers, constantly rotating shifts, on low wages and with no motivation, we will not get there; this is simply continuing down the path that brought us here, with the results that are plain to see.
And I would like to quote a statement made here last week, and I quote: “It is not by working longer hours that productivity will increase”; this statement is not mine, nor is it a phrase taken from a text by Marx; it was in fact a statement by the current Economy Minister.
Those who have dared to claim that this Labour package is designed to improve family relationships and free up more time must explain why the proposal is to further deregulate working hours, with all that this entails in terms of creating even greater obstacles to balancing work with personal and family life.
They must explain why, under this Labour package, employers can increase working hours by up to 2 hours a day, 10 hours a week, and up to 150 hours a year – hours which, moreover, are not paid as overtime – and why they are even proposing to impose on workers with children under 12, disabilities or chronic illnesses the obligation to work night shifts, at weekends or on public holidays, and the consequences that ensue.
“Balance and the best for everyone” – this is the Prime Minister’s summary, which translated means: workers work longer hours, earn less, become even more precarious and increasingly so, whilst the rest concentrate ever more wealth… here is a fine balance.
The current Labour law needs changes, and profound ones at that.
Ever since you passed the current Labour Code, the PCP has been fighting for the repeal of its grievous provisions, at the outset with the restoration of the principle of more favourable treatment and the repeal of the expiry of collective agreements.
And in light of this, what do they aim to do?
To make it even easier to allow collective agreements to lapse; to allow employers to choose which agreement to apply; to prevent collective agreements from covering temporary and outsourced workers who do exactly the same work, in the same places; to seek to suspend the application of collective agreements in the event of a business crisis, whatever that means…
Fighting this latest attack on workers and their rights is not only a matter of defending the Country, its economy and production, but also democracy itself.
And this is because there are those who, through this Labour package, dare to undermine trade union freedom.
There are those who dare to make it difficult for trade unions to access companies and workplaces; there are those who have the audacity to attack the right to strike.
Workers already face difficult lives and low wages; they already face a brutal rise in the cost of living; they already feel, and rightly so, that they are not respected.
Workers are not disposable parts; workers are the ones who carry the Country on their backs, they are the ones who ensure through their work that everything functions, they are the ones who produce wealth.
Without work, nothing works.
Workers are indispensable, and those who are indispensable deserve respect, dignity, rights, time to live their lives, and wages.
There were those who, with a degree of arrogance not seen in a long time, thought they had a clear path to impose the Labour package, but they were wrong: the workers rejected this labour package.
What were they expecting?
That workers would welcome their own unfair dismissals with open arms, and accept the blackmail of the threat of dismissal to impose all manner of arbitrary measures?
That young people would want to be stuck forever with temporary jobs and lives, bogus self-employment, day-to-day contracts, and unemployment?
Did they want current and future working mothers and fathers to be grateful for what, beyond the propaganda, amounts to a rollback of maternity and paternity rights?
That they would accept, with a smile on their lips, the employers’ tenet that “you know when you start but you don’t know what time you’ll finish”, or even further deregulation of working hours, working longer hours, and that they would be happy to swap paid overtime for unpaid work through the individual hour bank?
They wanted the workers to be distracted; they wanted that, but they aren’t.
Workers feel this threat and are standing up to yet another attack on their lives and the lives of their children.
This is no time to sit and wait.
What will determine the outcome of this confrontation is the strength, determination, unity and struggle of the workers.
On June 3, full support for the General Strike. A General Strike to defeat the Labour package, combat the rising cost of living and pave the way for a better and fairer for those who work, those who produce wealth, those who keep the Country running.