Miguel Portas and CGTP after Carvalho da Silva

Written by The Week, 28/01/2012

Miguel Portas analysed the “truly complicated problems” in society and in the labor world that CGTP will have to face after the Congress that will mark Manuel Carvalho da Silva abandon of lead as secretary general and his predicted substitution by Arménio Carlos. One of this problems, the MEP from Unitarian Left (GUE/NGL) defined, “is that the labor world has extraordinarily changed: the new work is precarious”.

CGTP's Congress was the dominant theme of Miguel Portas weekly participation in the program Conselho Superior at Antena Um radio station, mainly in the perspective of change of the secretary general. Independent from that, the MEP defined the problems the new elected leading structures, from the larger Portuguese union structure, in this magna meeting will have to face.

One of these problems, said, is the unions representation. Between the end of the seventies and now, in Portugal, the degree of unionisation decreased from about 60 percent to 19 percent, a value below the European average.

That problem goes together with the new labor reality. “The new work is precarious”, Miguel Portas said, “and if the unions, namely CGTP, were capable to express the old precariat, the major difficulty today is to give expression to the new precariat that goes from the call centres to undergraduate, people that cannot even join in a union for the simple reason that now they work in one sector, and later on another, that when they are not unemployed”.

In addition, Miguel Portas considers that CGTP “must have a flexible policy towards the collective negotiation because it's important not only defend the acquired rights and that are under a strong attack, as is important to have initiative and invention of new rights in an unfavourable context”.

About the change in the position of secretary general, Miguel Portas defined Arménio Carlos as “a very experienced union leader”, with “dozens of years of union activity and presence in the union leading structures”, which represents “an element of continuity”.

On the other hand, the MEP considers, a “significant difference” that Manuel Carvalho da Silva has always been a simple militant in PCP, a trend within large majority in the union, while Arménio Carlos is member of the party's Central Committee, “implying to him a new type of responsibility in the social and political dialogue”.

Miguel Portas stressed that with Manuel Carvalho da Silva, CGTP “never stropped being a union of fight but was also a union that went in the social dialogue, that subscribed four agreement of social dialogue, namely one about the minimum wage and another about professional training”, both “very important”. And it was also, Miguel Portas added, “the union that was capable of have a union in action with UGT”.

In this sense, he stressed, “it would be complicated if the existing difficulties between CGTP and UGT would be transformed in a fracture of in an insurmountable barrier because the labor world continues in need of the two union and the two unions fighting capacity, namely even for the organization of a general strike”.

In the beginning of the chronicle, Miguel Portas expressed his solidarity with the journalist Pedro Rosa Mended, “extensive to Raquel Freire”, for in another RDP space “with free and critical spirit had dare to pronounce the name of a country that apparently today is unpronounceable in the our country”.