The public administration strike, which began this Friday at 7 a.m., has already led to the closure of several schools in the north and south of the country, Sebastian Santana, coordinator of the Common Front, told the Lusa news agency.
“At 8:30 a.m. we received information that many schools were closed in the north and south of the country, but we do not have specific data yet,” said the coordinator of the United Front of Civil Servants Unions.
Sebastian Santana said he expects strong support for the strike also in the health sector and central services, namely the courts, social security services and tax authorities.
“We also know that there is already a large mobilization of workers who are moving to Lisbon for the day of struggle for concentration this Friday afternoon at the Ministry of Finance in Lisbon,” he said, adding that it is thousands of people.
According to Sebastian Santana, the reasons for strikes and protests have increased with the advent of the new government and the content of its program.
“The day we learned that responsibility for public administration would remain in the Ministry of Finance, we submitted our list of demands and still have not received a response,” the union leader previously told Lusa, noting that one of the priorities is In this book we are talking about a wage increase of at least 15%, a minimum of 150 euros per employee, “because workers cannot do without an increase until 2025.”
Sebastian Santana also said that if at the end of October, when the draft state budget for 2024 (OE2024) was approved, workers had reasons to go on strike, now these reasons are even greater, because “the problems have only gotten worse.”
In addition to the wage increases, which include increasing the state’s minimum wage to 1,000 by 2024, the Common Front also calls for changes to career and performance evaluation systems, as well as measures to strengthen government services.
According to Sebastian Santana, “public services are expected to open the door to the private sector” in sectors such as health and social care, in other words, “an absolute monstrosity of public administration” that workers cannot accept.