Left unites for “a good life” and against the Government

Portugal has already seen fifty Labor Day demonstrations in democracy, but there are demands that do not change, despite the “extraordinary steps” that have been taken since the 25th of April, assured this Wednesday the general secretary of the PCP, Paulo Raimundo, during the traditional demonstration organized by CGTP on May 1st: “There is still a lot to be done, and something that was a central element of April, which was social justice, remains to be done.”

Unsurprisingly, the issue appears to have been agreed between parties on the left wing of Parliament and the CGTP, which focused on working conditions in Portugal, starting with wages and working hours, and criticized the Government, which, according to with the PCP, he did not fulfill “the promises he made to the professional sectors”.

The bloc leader, Mariana Mortágua, after defending improvements in the way work is carried out in Portugal, calling for the discussion to move to Europe, also highlighted that the Government “has given contrary signals” on this topic.

“There is no serious commitment to increasing the minimum wage, nor any proposal to increase average wages”, criticized Mariana Mortágua, while ensuring that her party knows “how to do it”.

For the Block coordinator, it is necessary to impose “salary ranges” to “combat inequality within the same company. Prevent a worker from needing a year to earn the same as an administrator earns in a day.”

The proposal had already appeared before. After defending that the minimum wage rises to 900 euros “already this year” and that the working week becomes four days, Mariana Mortágua suggested the introduction of “salary ranges”, considering that “there is no reason why the president of a company earns one hundred, two hundred, three hundred times more than a worker earns. He doesn’t work three hundred times more. This is a condition for large companies to pay millionaire salaries to their presidents”, she criticized.

According to the leader of the Bloco de Esquerda, “the salary ranges would force a president to pay himself a millionaire salary, he can do it, but he has to raise the salaries of all the workers in that company”.

In tune with the Bloc, Livre’s spokesperson, Rui Tavares, raised one of its most important flags – the four-day work week – and argued that “it is necessary to know the data well, it was done in private and the results were positive.” According to Rui Tavares, “productivity has increased or is the same”.