Commercial workers are on strike this Wednesday for better salaries and professional advancements, denouncing intense rhythms and unregulated schedules. According to a union source, the strike is registering “excellent participation”, according to a union source, who points to partial closures of stores and total closures of some services, especially in large-scale food distribution.
“We are still determining compliance, especially since the vast majority of stores and chains have not even opened yet. But in those that had opening hours starting at 8 in the morning, we saw enormous limitations,” said Célia Lopes, from the Trade, Office and Services Workers Union of Portugal (CESP), in statements to the Lusa agency.
There are numerous limitations and customers must keep them in mind today. [quarta-feira]”he added.
According to the union leader, “the day of struggle belongs to all commercial workers, and will have a greater impact on the distribution chains, particularly in the distribution of food, which is where at this moment the strike can already be made visible, since either with partial closures of stores, or with total closures of some services in some chains.”
Célia Lopes explained that, “for example, in the Auchan chain there are already closed branches in the stores in the Algarve,” and “in the center and south of the country, the Auchan gas stations themselves are closed.” “In the Lidl store in Barreiro we are intervening because it only opened with two managers, that is, there are no minimum safety conditions for it to open, because the rest of the workers are all outside the store picketing,” he added. regretting the “inertia of the competent authorities in following up every time the union denounces the repeated practice of violating the constitutional right to strike.”
At the top of the demands of commerce and service workers are salary increases, and the CESP leader denounced that “in recent years they have had a very significant devaluation of their salaries,” witnessing “a total and complete deregulation and devaluation of wages.” Professional careers”.
Thus, if “10/15 years ago, at the peak of their career, any worker in a distribution company received around 200 euros above the national minimum wage, today those same workers receive the minimum wage,” he concluded.
Furthermore, the union denounces “enormous pressure towards the liberalization of the working day” in the sector, “due to the imposition of time bank regimes, in which workers, who already have a completely liberalized working day, would only know the arrival time, never knowing what time they would leave.”
“Every day, in the workplace, we are told about situations of workers who do not have public transportation to return home at the end of the day. There are workers who spend dozens, even hundreds of euros, every month on Uber to be able to get home at the end of the day,” denounces Célia Lopes.
“We have a very serious problem in the country with the lack of public transportation, we have totally unregulated schedules, we have shopping centers in large cities open until midnight and workers work until 00:30/01:00,” he emphasized.
In this context, the union demands the reduction of the working day to 35 hours per week, the closure of commercial establishments on Sundays and holidays and the limitation of opening hours, so that these units cannot be open beyond 10 p.m. hours.
This is because, he maintains, “activities that are essential” are at stake, that is, they “do not require such long periods of operation.”
The strike was called by two representative unions of the sector, linked to the CGTP and the UGT. CESP – The Trade, Office and Service Workers Union of Portugal (CGTP) stated, in a statement, that these workers have “an intense and unregulated work schedule”, working up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays.
For the union, businesses must close all national holidays, as well as Sundays, and after 10 p.m. The workers also demand a reduction in the working day to 35 hours per week.
The salaries and careers of commercial workers cannot continue to lose purchasing power: we demand the end of professional stagnation and the salary update of collective bargaining contracts without loss of rights.
The Union of Service Sector Workers (Sitese), belonging to UGT, also called for this Wednesday a strike that covers workers in commerce, offices and services, in particular companies affiliated with the Portuguese Association of Distribution Companies (APED). ).
Source: Observadora
