The strike over rising living costs comes just a week before the final vote on the 2023 budget.
Thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, and civil servants in Portugal have staged a walkout to demand wage increases amid rampant inflation, putting the majority Socialist government on the defensive just a week before a final vote on the 2023 budget.
Many schools and courts were closed on Friday across the country, hospital appointments and surgeries were cancelled, and garbage was left uncollected.
Because of high energy prices and rising living costs, many European countries are experiencing labour unrest.
The one-day strike was called by the Common Front of the Public Administration Union, which represents nearly half of Portugal’s 730,000 civil servants.
“This year all workers have already lost one month’s salary due to inflation,” union coordinator Sebastiao Santana told reporters. “We are getting poorer.”
Consumer prices
Civil servants had a 0.9-percent pay rise in 2022, but consumer prices soared more than 10 percent year-on-year in October, the fastest pace in more than 30 years.
“We are not on strike because we like to lose a day’s wage, we are on strike because the government has not responded to the issues we presented, mainly the need to compensate for high cost of living due to inflation,” Santana said.
The union is demanding a 10-percent salary increase, and a minimum of 100 euros ($103.67) a month for 2023, while the government has proposed an average pay rise of 3.6 percent. The government is forecasting inflation of 4 percent next year.
In October, the government, key business associations and the country’s second-largest labour union GUT struck a deal to raise the wages of private sector workers by 5.1 percent in 2023.
Workers at Volkswagen’s Autoeuropa car plant entered their second day of a partial strike demanding an extraordinary pay rise. The strike at one of Portugal’s top exporters affects the first two hours of each of its four shifts.