Portugal’s biggest unions yesterday went on their first joint general strike since 1988, hoping to weaken the Socialist government’s resolve on implementing austerity measures meant to tackle a debt crisis.
The country’s two biggest unions stopped trains and buses, grounded planes and halted services from healthcare to banking in protest against wage cuts and rising unemployment.
Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, whose government is struggling to quash speculation that Portugal will be the next in Europe to need a bailout after Ireland and Greece, has pledged to stay the course on wage cuts and tax hikes to cut the budget deficit.
As the strike began, Portugal’s largest exporter, Volkswagen’s Autoeuropa plant, halted production altogether.
“The production line is completely shut, so we expect that no cars will be produced today,” said Autoeuropa union coordinator Calros Chora, adding that only a small part of the plant dealing with repairs would be open.
“There is a picket line outside, but they are letting people in and out,” he said.
Lisbon has been plastered with banners for weeks urging workers to join the strike.
The CGTP union said all ports were now shut, and check-in counters at Lisbon’s main airport was empty. National airline TAP cancelled most of its flights. However, no mass protests were expected yesterday.
Roads in and around Lisbon, were choked with heavy traffic as many people chose to commute by car. Cafes and shops were open and vans delivered goods as usual.
The unions hope to tap into the growing dissatisfaction with the minority Socialist government’s austerity measures, which also include across the board spending cuts in public services.
“It’s the workers who are paying for the crisis, not the bankers nor the shareholders of big companies,” said Leandro Martins, a 65-year-old pensioner.
“This is a strike against rightist policies, to demand new policies serving the Portuguese people,” he said.
Portugal has suffered from years of low growth — unlike other weak euro economies such as Ireland and Spain that went from boom to bust — and waning competitiveness, which economists say undermines its ability to ride out the debt crisis.
“Maybe the strike will not provoke radical changes in the austerity course the government has chosen, but it does represent an additional element of uncertainty in the already unstable setting in the country,” said Elisio Estanque, a sociology researcher at the University of Coimbra.
Even though the economy is growing this year, economists fear it will slide back into recession next year as higher taxes and civil servant wage cuts of 5 percent bite.
Unemployment, already at its highest since the 1980s at 10.9 percent, could rise further.
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