In Portugal, the addition of social movements weakens the socialist government

Public school employees demonstrate for better wages and working conditions, in Lisbon, January 14, 2023. PEDRO NUNES / REUTERS

Just over a year ago, the large victory of the Socialist Party (PS) in the Portuguese legislative elections gave it a comfortable absolute majority in Parliament. But the honeymoon with voters seems to have fizzled. For several months, the government of Antonio Costa has been confronted with multiple social unrest and a rapid deterioration in its popularity. On Saturday February 25, thousands of Portuguese are expected to take to the streets again under a common banner, that of a new platform called Just Life, calling on the Portuguese to demonstrate against inflation in this low-wage, low-housing country. become overpriced.

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According to a poll by the Catholic University for the media Publico, RTP and Antena 1, published on Thursday 23 February, 53% of Portuguese consider the government’s management to be “bad” or “very bad”, i.e. fifteen points more than there eight months, against 39% who consider it “reasonable” and barely 7% “good”. The PS also fell by six points in voting intentions compared to July, to 32%, closely followed by the Social Democratic Party (PSD, center right), to 31%.

Symbols of the social discontent that has taken over the country, teachers have been demonstrating regularly and massively in the streets of Lisbon for more than two months to demand salary increases and better working conditions. They ask for the catch-up of salaries frozen following the financial crisis of 2008. They also denounce the precariousness of the thousands of contract workers, assigned to each new school year tens or even hundreds of kilometers from home. Their salary of 1,200 euros, which takes into account neither seniority nor the resulting travel and accommodation costs, barely allows them to complete the month.

“Budgetary orthodoxy”

“The lack of teachers is increasingly glaring and the government’s measures to meet the needs, especially in the areas south of Lisbon, where rents are unaffordable, are only worsening the working conditions of teachers”, assures Sandra Dias, spokesperson for the new Union of all education professionals. For this 44-year-old Spanish teacher who teaches in Setubal, south of Lisbon, and who was on contract for more than eighteen years before being appointed, the government sins by “arrogance”, because of its absolute majority , and by “lack of political will to invest in the public sector, while it distributed millions of euros to the airline TAP or to the banks”, threatened with bankruptcy. A recurring opinion in the processions of demonstrators.

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