CP – Ticket inspectors and workers at Comboios de Portugal are on strike this Sunday, demanding wage increases. A strike that until eight in the morning has already caused 59 train suppressions, having made 63 connections. In other words, up to that moment, 48% of the planned convoys had been suppressed, an official CP source told Rádio Observador.
Previously, Luís Bravo, from the Railway Union of the Itinerant Commercial Magazine (SFRCI), had declared to Lusa that “it will be a very strong strike, possibly there will be almost no trains. We know it’s a holiday [de Santo António]but [a greve] Less harmful to users. We know that those we transport are of the same social status as us and we try not to harm those who come to work.”
CP had also warned of major service interruptions due to the strike.
According to the trade unionist, it is at stake that the workers continue to have their salaries frozen for more than 10 years. Luís Bravo regretted that the sector has not yet received the 0.9% update, approved for the civil service, which he described as “miserable”, representing between five and nine euros, depending on the level. According to the union, for this, the CP administration “imposes” the signing of a new company agreement, “with worse working conditions.”
“Transport workers, assigned to trains and ticket offices, who start their shift at five, six or seven in the morning and leave after midnight, have to travel in their own vehicles and, with the increase in fuel, in these moments, about 20% of his salary is already going to go to work”, he pointed out.
Added to this are shift work and rotating days off and a “brutal increase in the cost of living”, factors that have led even younger workers to leave the company.
On the other hand, the contests to incorporate new employees have become vacant, because “there is no one who applies with these salaries and in continuous work”, in that sense, as he pointed out, there are exhausted trains, which are being suppressed. due to the lack of workers, he lamented, defending that the CP administration and the guardianship seem to be “comfortable” with this situation.
“It is a day that we would like to impact and that there would be a reaction from the Government and the administration of the CP, but possibly they were all on extended vacations,” he concluded.
For the day On June 23, a 24-hour strike is also planned for operational railway workers.
CP has already warned that the circulation of the company’s trains should have “important interruptions on June 12, 13 and 16 due to the strike.
CP informs that customers who have already purchased a ticket to travel on the Alfa Pendular, Intercidades, Interregional and Regional trains will be able to refund the total value of the purchased ticket, or its revalidation, free of charge.
Since the beginning of the month, there has been a strike by CP workers for overtime and vacations, which lasts until the end of the month, but has not provoked any repression, an official company source told Lusa on June 3.
On May 16, CP announced that it had reached an agreement with 12 unions to revise the Company Agreement, leaving three union structures out.
The agreement reached involved a salary increase of 0.9%, with retroactive effect to January 1, 2022, the homogenization of the dining room benefit at 7.74 euros and the integration of former EMEF workers in the salary scale of CP, retroactive to January 1.
Source: Observadora
