The bloc’s coordinator, Mariana Mortagua, said this Monday that BE has never hesitated to stand on the side of those who work and against those who exploit workers, given that Portugal cannot be a “Mecca of low wages” for multinational corporations.
After a morning of radio debates between almost all parliamentary leaders, the blockade caravan began the second official day of the campaign by joining a protest by hundreds of Tele Performance workers in Lisbon.
With a microphone in hand, addressing the workers gathered on the stairs of the building, Mariana Mortagua, at one point clearly emotional, declared that “there are two ways to be in life and to be in politics,” because “either you are with those who you work or are with those who want to profit and exploit those who work.”
“The parties must make a choice: whose side they are on. My party and I have never wavered, we have put the word instability on the map, we have been by your side in all the battles and we are now, in any weather”, confident.
The BE leader said “no thank you” to the multinationals who have set up factories in Portugal “to exploit workers and pay them sub-minimum wages”, saying Teleperfomance workers “have every right to fight for higher wages”, and leaving thanks to those to hundreds of people for “fighting for a more worthy country.”
“A country that does not accept labor exploitation because it is not dignity, it is not modernity, it is not economic growth,” he said, then leaving a few words in English because many workers from other countries were present.
Earlier, Mariana Mortagua told reporters that “Portugal cannot be a Mecca for low wages, it cannot be a country that attracts multinational corporations because it pays poverty wages.”
“This is a historical phenomenon. When the right talks about large multinational corporations setting up shop in Portugal, unfortunately this is exactly the model we have: a huge multinational corporation that refuses to pay the minimum wage because it claims that the housing it provides and the bed it provides is a historical phenomenon. provides workers with a portion of their salaries and refuses to pay workers bonuses,” he explained.
At stake, according to the BE leader, are “thousands of qualified young people who are on the national minimum wage or below a thousand euros.”
“The fight for higher wages, the fight to prevent young people from emigrating, is happening here, precisely in these people who are participating in this historic demonstration today,” he emphasized.
For Mortagua, this is a fair demand, and “Portugal is not suitable for this” because “it cannot be a low-paid offshore where thousands of qualified young people work from home and this is considered part of their salary.”
“Often when the right says that it is necessary to attract multinational corporations to Portugal, this is an example of the wrong model,” he repeated.
Hundreds of Tele Performance workers are now concentrated in Lisbon, demanding higher wages and an end to bonus cuts.
The workers are also demanding wage increases based on length of service, an end to bonus cuts and mandatory payment of food allowances for the food card, which they also want to increase.
Teleperformance is a multinational company with a presence in more than 90 countries and approximately 500,000 employees.
The company employs around 14,000 people in Portugal and provides services to companies such as TAP, EDP, BPI, Santander, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Netflix.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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