Historic general strike in Portugal paralyzes transport, closes schools and puts pressure on hospitals

Lizzie NassarRFI correspondent in Lisbon.

The effects of the strike began on Wednesday evening (10) and intensified in the early hours of Thursday morning. Trains were the first to report problems, with some traffic interrupted for two hours in the morning, particularly in the Porto region, where almost half of the lines were suspended.

CP, the company responsible for operation, is operating only with minimum services until Friday (12), and many passengers have faced delays of more than half an hour. To try to overcome the chaos, companies and workers have agreed on tolerated delays or home office.

In Lisbon, the metro did not open its doors: it remained completely closed since 6 a.m. and did not resume service until early Friday morning. In Porto, only the yellow line works; all others are interrupted.

Those looking for alternatives also encountered difficulties. Carris, Lisbon’s bus company, operates just 12 cars, all with much longer intervals than normal. At the Transtejo and Soflusa river crossings, only 25% of connections are maintained, and only during peak hours.

The airline sector is also affected: TAP currently only operates a third of its flights and the Angolan company TAAG has canceled its daytime flight to Lisbon.

Schools are closing and hospitals are under pressure

Many schools remain closed. Parents were warned in advance to prepare, but the strike still caused disruption. Fenprof, the largest teachers’ federation, already anticipated a high participation – and this was confirmed.

The health sector, for its part, was already showing signs of collapse even before the strike. Emergency wait times averaged over 10 hours and reached 15 hours in some cases, well above the one hour recommendation for initial care.

This Wednesday, only minimum services are guaranteed: emergencies, hospitalizations, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and emergency care. But the system was already overloaded: there is a lack of staff, a lack of resources and the exhaustion of the teams is evident.

For professionals and patients, the feeling is one of accumulated wear and tear.

The issues: the work package

The government’s proposal makes more than a hundred changes to labor law. The most criticized points are:

– 150 compulsory overtime hours per year, which can be imposed unilaterally by the company.

– Longer temporary contracts, ranging from two to three years; which unions consider to be a stimulus to job insecurity.

– Stricter rules on the schedules of breastfeeding mothers, reducing the period of flexibility.

– New limitations for parents of children up to 12 years old to request adapted schedules.

Unions believe that these measures represent a historic loss of rights, mainly affecting women, single-parent families and the most vulnerable workers. The government says the goal is to “modernize” the labor market and increase the country’s competitiveness.

How the population reacts

According to recent polls, 61% of Portuguese support the general strike. However, there is a lot of irritation in daily life: the strike takes place in mid-December, a month of intense movements in the cities, and leaves thousands of people without the possibility of moving.

The proposed revision of labor legislation, called “Labor XXI”, was presented by the government on July 24. However, while the content of the reform was discussed in Social Concertation, the CGTP and the UGT began to denounce this package as an attack on workers’ rights. The accumulation of these tensions has led the two centers, which rarely act together, to call the current strike, the first joint strike since 2013.

Even after presenting a new version with some concessions, the government indicated that it did not intend to prolong the negotiations indefinitely and that, with or without social agreement, the text would be debated and voted on in the Assembly of the Republic in the coming months, after the conclusion of the budget cycle.