Portugal - Nationwide public sector strike - February 28, 2019

Public workers in hospitals, schools and rubbish collection went on a nationwide strike on 14-15 February 2019 demanding the government to raise wages in the public sector. The government promised to increase the salaries of the lowest paid workers in 2019 but unions say the pay of around 600.000 public sector staff has been frozen for the last 10 years. Nurses were already holding strategic strike actions that prevented many operations from the beginning of the months. The nurses went on strike in demand of better pay and working conditions and have ignored a government order to get back to work. The leader of one of the main nurses’ unions even started a hunger strike after prosecutors declared the three-week-long walkout by surgical nurses unlawful and threatened to impose penalties on those still taking part. FENPROF, FNE and eight other education trade unions also joined the national public sector strike. The teachers went on strike to protest the Government's decision to recover only 2 years, 9 months and 18 days of the frozen service time for teachers. A large national demonstration of teachers and educators is scheduled on 23 March 2019 in Lisbon.

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For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers or Sanne van der Gaag, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the Head of communications at the ETUI, Willy De Backer wdebacker@etui.org © ETUI