The river connections between Lisbon and Margem Sul are suffering from this Monday until August 19, affecting peak hours, due to a partial strike by Transtejo workers.
According to the Federation of Transport and Communications Unions (Fectrans), the The strike affects connections between Lisbon and Cacilhas (Almada municipality), Seixal, Montijo and Trafaria (Almada)in the district of Setúbal, and constitutes “a fight for better salaries and services”.
“From August 8 to 19 of the same month, the workers will carry out partial strikes in each work shift, because the administration/Government has not started an effective negotiation process, in order to discuss the union’s demands, of the which, in addition to the salary increase, is the improvement of the public service”, explains the federation in a statement published on its website.
According to the union structure, every day the Transtejo management publishes notices of career suppression “due to technical limitations in the fleet”, a situation that Fectrans assures will worsen in the coming days due to the partial struggle of the company’s workers.
“Solving the problems in this and other public companies is a political choice between making the necessary investments to value workers and retain them, or choosing to respond to the demands of economic-financial groups, to the detriment of workers and the public service. “, considers .
Fectrans defends that “there is only a labor dispute because the administration/government chooses to remain silent and ignore the protests of workers and users”.
The company, for its part, published information on its website about the service interruptions from August 8 to 12 caused by the partial strike and the overtime strike, called by the union organizations representing the workers.
In the notices, the carrier gives an indication of the scheduled routes for each of the connections between the two banks, that is, between Lisbon and Cacilhas, Seixal, Montijo and Trafaria.
Regarding the connection between Cacilhas and Lisbon (Cais do Sodré), Transtejo adds that, in order to minimize the impact of cancellations and delays on the lines, some ships start their journey as soon as the maximum passenger capacity is reached, regardless of the scheduled time.
In turn, regarding the connections between Cais do Sodré and Seixal and Montijo, the company explains that the holding, or not, of races is it depends on joining the strike.
During downtime, the terminals are closed for security reasons.
Planned service outages for the period August 16-19 will be announced over the next week. The same happens with the connection between Trafaria/Porto Brandão (Almada) and Belém (Lisbon).
Transtejo is responsible for connecting Seixal, Montijo, Cacilhas and Trafaria/Porto Brandão, while Soflusa carries out the crossing between Barreiro and Terreiro do Paço, in Lisbon, which is the only connection without planned limitations.
In the first six months of the year, Lisbon residents faced more than a month of transport strikes
Source: Observadora