The workers of the Metropolitano de Lisboa will strike Thursday morning from 05:00 to 09:30 due to a lack of understanding with the administration in the process of negotiating the company’s agreement, FECTRANS said this Monday.
“If nothing is done by the 18th [quinta-feira]although the company has committed to make extra efforts by that date, if nothing is done, yes, the strike will continue and on the 18th the Metropolitano will only open its doors closer to 10:00,” said Sarah Gligo of the Federation of Transport Unions and communications (FECTRANS) in statements to Lusa’s agency.
The head of FECTRANS spoke after a meeting between the administration of the Metropolitano de Lisboa and the trade unions representing the workers, who had brought to the negotiating table a preliminary notice of a partial strike next Thursday 18 May.
“At the moment, the strike is going on, we don’t even have minimum services for train traffic,” the trade unionist said, referring to the workers’ protest taking place from 05:00 to 09:30, but for logistical reasons, Metropolitano should only open its doors around 10:00.
Due to the specifics of the schedules, the shop workers begin a partial strike at 02:30.
Since an agreement was reached between unions and company management on this year’s demands in November 2022, this will be the first stop to affect train traffic as workers have been on strike for overtime and special events since last year.
Under normal business conditions, the Metropolitano de Lisboa is open from 6:30 am to 1:00 am every day, including weekends and public holidays.
“The company today [segunda-feira] announced some measures that were allowed by the tutelage, so the possibility of opening career regulation and that temporary increase that the government has already announced in the amount of 1% in the wage mass for workers,” said Sarah Gligo, indicating that this was another negotiation meeting among scheduled companies by agreement.
“We still have not come to an agreement,” the head of FECTRANS stressed, explaining that the measures presented by the company’s management are “far below” what is the negotiated proposal submitted by all trade union organizations.
In addition to monetary issues, “there are other issues, namely issues that are in the sphere of management only and only of the company, on which we could try to come to an understanding, but on which we have not succeeded so far.”
At the meeting, the unions representing the workers presented two other strike notices, one for May 23 and the other for May 30, which will also be partial, for the same dates and in the same order as the strike scheduled for Thursday, in order to “The claims are the same,” stressed the trade unionist.
“We always hope that the company has the opportunity to reach a successful conclusion about the requirements of the workers, so we will always analyze all the proposals that are made to us and make decisions in accordance with the decision of the workers.” he added. “Sarah Gligo.”
As for the commitment to the strike, the prospect is that “it will be total, not least because the workers have already made it clear that we will have to intensify the struggle,” he stressed.
When asked about the impact of the strike on the timing of subway traffic restrictions due to work on the yellow and green lines, a FECTRANS spokeswoman said she hoped users would understand the inconvenience caused.
“Obviously, we expect to cause some inconvenience, but we don’t have a workaround either. Yes, there would be, if we could come to an agreement with the administration,” he stressed.
The representative trade unions of workers are STRUP (Union of Road and Urban Transport Workers of Portugal), which is part of FECTRANS, STTM (Union of Tractors of Metropolitano de Lisboa), SINDEM (Union of Urban Services), SITRA (Transport Workers). Union), SITESE (Trade Union of Service Workers) and STMETRO (Trade Union of Lisbon Metro Workers).
Lusa requested information from the leadership of the Metropolitano de Lisboa about a meeting with the unions, until he received a response.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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