The gripe is not really against PT, whose workers last went on strike over ten years ago, but against Altice, the new French owner of the telecoms group whose idea of sound labour relations involves a sneaky edict followed by a shrug when le merde hits the proverbial.
The company has been moving workers’ contracts from the safe haven of PT companies, to subsidiaries despite the concern by those involved that accrued rights will not be respected and it will be far easier to sack them in the future, especially during the first year of their new contracts.
The protest started first thing this morning with about 40 workers at the company’s front door. later, over two thousand PT employees joinied the demonstration, shouting as if with one voice outside the company's headquarters in Picoas, " esta administração não é solução” (this administration is not the solution.)
The last PT workers’ strike was in 2006, triggered by changes to the company health plan.
Today, the motives are "more serious. We have reached a dead end," said a concerned PT worker who referred to a climate of "fear" and "pressure" that lhad ensured many timid workers had remained at their desks.
The workers’ message for the government was to prevent "the destruction of PT Portugal."
"Despite saying that they are not redundancies, the transfer of workers to other companies will lead to redundancies within one year," the legal period needed before contractual rights are maintained, warned an employee in PT's administrative section.
At the beginning of June, Meo transferred 37 of its IT workers to Winprovit, which does not even belong to Altice.
Now, the company is preparing to transfer another 118 - about 22 to Sudtel, 74 to Tnord, others to group companies, and 22 for Visabeira, according to the unions.
The legality of this measure has been questioned by trade unions and has led to the opening of an inspection by the Labour Conditions Authority.
The workers say that government intervention, through the amendment of labour legislation, is the only solution that workers see as workable.
In the mid-afternoon, the demonstration moved on to António Costa’s residence in São Bento.
One of the representative unions for PT workers said that 70% of the workforce was on strike today. PT’s management said the figure was more like 19%.
