May 1st: Parade in Lisbon arrives at Alameda. In Porto, hundreds in the Allies

Hundreds of people started this Wednesday at around 3:30 pm walking up Avenida Almirante Reis towards Alameda Afonso Henriques, in Lisbon, to mark Labor Day.

“1st of May, increase salaries and pensions, guarantee rights” and “Fight exploitation, April for a Portugal with a future”, are the mottos that lead a march that the secretary general of the CGTP, Tiago Oliveira, wants to be a demonstration by workers that the values ​​of April are as present as they were 50 years ago.

Speaking to journalists, Tiago Oliveira recalled last week’s demonstration in Lisbon to mark the 50th anniversary of the “great achievement of the 25th of April, which the 1st of May confirmed”.

Therefore, he said he also expected “a great May 1st” today, also justified by the “prospect of low wages” contained in the program of the new government of the Democratic Alliance (AD).

“With the government making life difficult for workers”, they will demonstrate, with this demonstration, that a better life is possible, he added.

In Porto, the May Day celebrations took place at Aliados, where hundreds gathered in a demonstration for labor rights, but also for other causes, such as the defense of Palestine.

Labor Day is celebrated across the country today, with the CGTP and UGT trade unions promoting demonstrations and initiatives to value workers.

The general secretary of UGT, Mário Mourão, told Lusa, in Vila Real, that the signals coming from the AD government “are not very encouraging” and rejects the idea of ​​liberalizing redundancies.

In statements before the rallies that mark the celebration of the Labor Day celebrations in Vila Real by the union central, Mário Mourão considered that conversations for social consultation should start where they left off and “point to the future and not to the past”.

“A meeting of the Social Concertation is scheduled for 7 [de Maio] and the signals we have received from the statements made by members of the government are not very encouraging”, said the leader of the General Union of Workers.

Mourão continued with questions that touch on what he considers to be the essential points in returning to negotiations: “one year ago today the Decent Work Agenda came into force. Is it to get worse or to get better? Do we want to retain young people with legislation that does not provide workers with conditions of stability? How do we want to do it?”

The recent admission by the government that “the problem of precariousness can be resolved by making layoffs more flexible” is not even a scenario for the union leader.

“It will probably be resolved. Precarious people become unemployed and stop being precarious. This is not the solution that UGT shares. We have a great divergence here about the way in which precariousness is combatted in Portugal”, emphasized Mário Mourão.

May 1st, International Workers’ Day, had its origins in the events in Chicago 137 years ago, when there was a day of struggle to reduce working hours to eight hours, which was violently repressed by the authorities of the States United States of America, which killed dozens of workers and sentenced four union leaders to hang.

50 years ago, in Portugal, the celebration of May 1st, just one week after the April 25th revolution, was a great popular demonstration.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets showing their joy and with demands such as ‘the right to strike’, ‘end the war now’ or ‘return of soldiers’, according to photographs from the time.

In Lisbon, it is estimated that 500,000 people attended the 1974 Labor Day demonstration.