We are holding our initiative as part of the PCP’s campaign on “Employment and workers' rights, against exploitation” under the theme “Valorise wages, defend employment”, two days after the 47th. anniversary celebrations of the April Revolution held all over the country, highlighted by a magnificent and popular parade that went down Avenida da Liberdade, in Lisbon, which reveals, with the youth that joined it, that April and its values are the future, and when the Portuguese workers are also preparing to make the May Day celebrations, another great and combative day of struggle in defence of their rights and living conditions.

Wages and employment, these are two of the most central issues to ensure decent living conditions for those who work.

Two issues that a policy that is truly alternative to the right-wing policy and that aims at an effective valorisation of work and workers needs a positive response.

A response that necessarily must consider the valorisation of wages as a national emergency and creation of jobs as a priority of the country's economic policy, based on the valorisation of the productive sectors and national production, as well as a decisive fight against dismissals and labour precariousness, not only because of the injustice they hold, but also because of the pressure they exert on devaluation of wages, which is very evident in the private sector of the economy.

In the political options and proposals presented by the PS government, we did not find the answer that was necessary to these issues and in what is announced, namely in the Recovery and Resilience Plan and the Stability Plan 2021/2025, as in relation to labour legislation, which maintains an unacceptable discretionary advantage to big capital given to it by the amendments of the Labour Code by successive governments in recent years, in terms of collective bargaining and dismissals.

As regards the Recovery Plan, it is far from being aimed at the solution of the country's worsened economic and social problems, and it is still far from responding to its structural deficits, namely a policy of replacing imports with national production.

And as far as the Stability Plan is concerned, it maintains the options and guidelines of the policy that has weakened our country over the years, the speedy return to the policy of the dictatorship of the deficit, also jeopardising the necessary economic recovery and maintaining the same restrictions that have prevented the hiring of thousands of workers in shortage and the fair increase in wages in the Central and Local Public Administration.

An additional wrong signal that is given in terms of wages to the private sector, in a context in which the wage bill in the distribution of wealth maintains, as has long been recognised, a great imbalance.

This is an initiative that takes place at a time when the workers feel with special severity the enormous pressure that capital, under the pretext of the epidemiological situation and with the collusion of the government, has been exerting on employment, rights and wages to take even further the exploitation of workers and the plundering of public resources.

We had serious economic and social problems resulting from years of right-wing policies by PS, PSD and CDS governments that weakened the country.

We had a deteriorated social situation that for years has been promoted, with the imposition and subsistence of a low-wage model, by the growing precariousness of industrial relations and the maintenance of high levels of unemployment.

We now face these problems in a heightened way, as clearly demonstrated by the use and abuse of lay-off by large companies and multinationals with many tens of millions of euros in profits, such as Autoeuropa, Visteon, Delphi or TST which affected more than 9,000 workers in the Setúbal Peninsula.

A problem that goes beyond the Setúbal Peninsula. The National Accounts already released, relating to 2020, tell us that the shareholders and families of the group of companies received 7.4 billion euros in dividends, 332 million more than in 2019. And in what is known of the accounts already disclosed of 13 economic groups of the so-called PSI-20 operating in the country, their profits are around 2 billion 260 million euros, which almost all ended up in the pockets of their shareholders, which collected 1 billion 938 million, about 85% of the profits.

A situation that assumed a large dimension in terms of employment, since between March 2020 and the end of the year there were more than ten thousand workers, essentially precarious or working on behalf of manpower companies, which on the Setúbal Peninsula, had their jobs destroyed.

Precarious work that has an unacceptable scale in some companies and sectors, as is the case with Simoldes and Visteon, or is a substantial part of the workforce used in several large companies and industrial complexes, such as the Mitrena shipyards.

A situation that required the companies to concentrate efforts on taking sanitary measures, but that life clearly showed that this was not the option taken by the employers and that in many companies the legal obligations with Hygiene and Health at Work are not respected, nor were contingency plans adopted to guarantee the health of the workers and the functioning of the companies as was required. The examples are many.

A situation that the employers, with the connivance of the PS government, took advantage of to take steps in the materialisation of old aims, such as the implementation of teleworking and whose main goals are the individualisation of employment bonds, the reduction of individual rights and obstruction of the exercise of collective rights, which, if achieved, besides posing additional problems to the unity and struggle of workers, enhance the increase of their power and profits at the expense of reducing income and rights and by transferring the costs of their responsibility to the workers.

A situation that has been used by many companies to try to prevent workers from exercising their collective rights, namely trying to prevent the holding of workers’ meetings and which continues in several companies at this level, or with attempts to create hour banks or improper scheduling. of vacation days, and that has only been unsuccessful because it was opposed by organisations representing the workers and the workers themselves.

A situation that also highlighted the shortcomings of the ACT [body that oversees working conditions] and which in this context assumes even greater gravity, given a pattern of passive and complicit intervention with the employers’ claims, which have to be fought and corrected.

A situation that capital takes advantage of, even in the face of very positive results, as is the case of many large companies, some from here in the Setúbal Peninsula, such as Navigator, using as argument to justify attempts to withdraw rights, not increase wages and lower the income of the workers.

This serious situation we are facing has been opposed as you well know by the PCP, intervening, denouncing, and proposing measures in all the places where it is present, and the workers and their class organisations. Intervention and struggle that has been decisive to prevent the situation of the workers, the people and the country from getting worse.

Were it not for the struggle and the collective drive of the workers exercising their rights, resisting the enormous pressure and all attempts to curb their initiative and action, as in the last May 1st., but also here in the district.

Were it not for the action and intervention of the PCP with its initiative and proposal, the situation would be even more serious than the one witnessed. It was with the intervention and proposal of the PCP that it was possible to ensure, namely, the payment of full wages to more than 280 thousand workers under lay-off since the beginning of the year, to renew the unemployment benefit for another six months to more than 40 thousand workers in 2021, hiring thousands of workers in public services or, although insufficient, recognise the rights of parents who accumulate teleworking with support for minor children.

Life has already shown that the serious situation to which the country has been led cannot be overcome with the false alternatives of the various variants of the right-wing policy, whether led by the PS or by PSD with or without their old or new allies.

Faced with a national situation marked by economic and social deterioration, what was needed was a bolder policy to serve the workers, the people and the country and not to yield to the interests of big capital.

Life has proven in the recent past that the valorisation of work and workers, of their wages and rights was a determining factor for the growth and dynamization of the economy and creation of jobs.

It has shown how false was the theory that announced the country's disaster due to wage increases.

In the recovery of the country and in response to the serious situation in which the country finds itself, the increase in the wages of all workers, including the increase in the National Minimum Wage, which in the short term should reach 850 euros, and in the wages of workers in the Public administration is the solution.

An emergency! An emergency to guarantee the dignity of those who work! An emergency to give a different answer to the serious situation of the country and another impetus to the economy, and to foster a higher rate of growth and jobs that we need and do not have.

An emergency due to the contribution it can make to the establishment of new generations in the country and to combat the demographic deficit. An emergency to give greater consistency to a policy of sustainability of the Social Security. An emergency to build decent pensions in the future of every Portuguese.

Portugal needs to set in motion a real development programme for the country and break with a path that has neglected productive activities and deepened external dependence.

This is the time to get Portugal to produce in the most various fields, which requires not forgetting the valorisation and defence of the existing industrial base, namely of the manufacturing industry.

It is time to also ensure sanitary conditions with more vaccination, screening, testing, seeking solutions other than those imposed by the European Union and the pharmaceutical multinationals.

Portugal needs solutions to guarantee full employment. Solutions to reduce marked inequalities and social injustices.

It needs another policy, an alternative patriotic and left-wing policy, capable of ensuring economic development and social progress.

A policy to guarantee the right to a decent life for everyone and not just for a few!