There is no period in the centenary life of this Party when the questions of this meeting – which highlights the valuable and indispensable intervention of communists in the trade union movement and their decisive contribution to the organization, unity and struggle of workers – were not always at the centre of its attention, concern and work.
The Party arose, in an original manner, from within the trade union movement and by the will of the Portuguese working class and workers, and therefore this relationship between the Portuguese Communists and the trade union movement has very deep roots, developed with the fruitful work, intervention and action of successive generations of communists.
The PCP, whose centenary we now commemorate, emerged to give shape to an independent and autonomous intervention of the working class as a historical subject of social transformation, distinct and opposite to the ruling classes, a Party aimed towards a new society free from exploitation.
The Party arose in a context of intense political and ideological battle, not only against capital and its political representatives – which held a monopoly over power and political representation –, but also breaking with the prevailing views within the labour and trade union movement, wherein a refusal to engage in political struggle and the defence of anarcho-syndicalism's disarming and ineffective apoliticism, in spite of its dedication and courage, positioned the labour movement in tow of the initiative of its class enemies and putschist tendencies, as substitutes for mass action. Forms of intervention enhanced by an emphasis on higher forms of struggle, regardless of the conditions and contexts of its development and by favouring direct action, without considering allies or stages.
A political and ideological battle, but also an organizational battle that lasted from the 1920s to the early 1940s of the last century and that would also assume other forms in other periods of the one hundred years of intervention and struggle of the communists amidst the workers and their organizations in defence of their independence, autonomy, unity and struggle.
In this initiative, part of our Party's centennial celebration, we recall the first and significant milestone towards the needed change – PCP's Conference in April 1929 – which begins a new phase, affirming new forms and methods of struggle and connection with the masses; of organic, ideological and political reinforcement of workers' organizations, particularly the trade unions; and with a significant impact on the action and struggle during the great crisis of capitalism of 1929/33.
A Conference where the contribution of Bento Gonçalves stands out – PCP's Secretary-General between 1929 and 1942, when he died a victim of fascism in the Concentration Camp of Tarrafal –, specifically towards the restructuring of the class trade union movement, according to a plan he elaborated. We communists do not forget his role as trade union leader, as well as his action to affirm and build a workers’ party of a new type, breaking with the organizational conceptions and criteria of bourgeois parties, and his determination to the idea that is possible to fight against fascism, by taking the adequate organisational measures.
At the time of this Conference, PCP had been illegalized for three years, following the coup d’état of May 28, 1926. A situation that required a Party prepared for the clandestine struggle and that defined trade union work and, consequently, the mass struggle as a priority. A struggle conceived as the solution for defending the interests of workers, as a school of learning and for developing consciousness about the workers' place and role in a society divided into classes and based on the exploitation of work and workers. The creation of the CIS, the Inter-Trade Union Commission, the search for unity, the effort to create industrial trade unions, instead of professional unions, in an attempt to unite workers on a single front of struggle, these were solutions that reflected an effort to unify, solutions that strengthened the struggle of the working class and workers in those difficult times of crisis and of growing advance of fascism in Portugal.
An advance that would receive a strong boost with Hitler's victory in Germany and which resulted, after 1933, in a qualitative leap in the fascist offensive towards the liquidation of the free trade union movement in Portugal, with the imposition of the National Labour Statute and the creation of national district-level trade unions, subject to the approval of the fascist government, with their leaderships dependent on government approval, while also declaring that strikes were a crime.
A harsh reality that the Portuguese communists sought to counter by organizing the struggle, in a titanic effort to connect with the masses and their problems, and that later would also entail taking over the unions imposed by the fascist regime, from within.
A new and determined orientation that required great courage and determination, in a context of great repression and great dangers, but also of natural misunderstandings that had to be overcome.
Yes, a titanic effort ensued, well evident in the importance it received during PCP's first clandestine Congress, in 1943, (its 3rd Congress), and in Álvaro Cunhal's report, reflecting not only his personal commitment to follow and study the problems of the workers and their intervention, but also the contribution of many cadres, towards adapting the organization, intervention and struggle of the working class and workers to the conditions imposed by the fascist regime.
The Congress confirmed and decided this contribution of great originality that took into account and gave a creative response to the specificity of the Portuguese situation, in how to intervene in the workers' movement at the trade union level, and in the solutions chosen to ensure the unity of the working class, choices that would influence and determine the unique characteristics presented by the Portuguese united trade union movement.
A change in direction that resulted in abandoning the development of clandestine trade unions – which had been the first response to the fascistization of trade unions and that was early on proven to be ineffective – and assuming a decisive intervention, with slates of unity, to take from within the only legal unions, of mandatory unionization – the so-called national unions.
The two main lines of work that become a constant in communist activity during the fascist regime were to unmask the fascist leaderships and work to elect leaders trusted by workers, in slates of communists in unity with workers of other orientations, and develop, from the positions won, struggles in the companies and workplaces.
An guideline that already advanced the perspective, which also proved to be a great success, of using, after the overthrow of fascism, the material base and resources of the national unions, therefore not defending their dissolution, but using them and holding free elections.
This correct and original orientation, together with the direct initiative of the Party in the companies and fields to support and promote the unity commissions, made it possible to carry out great mass struggles, even in the absence of freedom and under strong repression.
This orientation and the ensuing struggles transformed the working class into the vanguard of the anti-fascist struggle and created the conditions – both material and in terms of cadres and mass participation – for the emergence of the Intersindical in 1970, and for this organization to play a central role in the great mass movements and strikes before the April Revolution, and the prominent role it assumed in the revolutionary process.
The persistent pursuit to implement this orientation allowed the labour and trade union movement, and in particular Intersindical – quickly recognized as the major trade union confederation of the Portuguese workers –, to give a decisive contribution to the popular uprising that followed the military uprising on the 25th of April 1974, and become a driving force of the Revolution, ensuring significant improvements in the living conditions of workers, and a force in the fight for the realization and recognition of the Revolution's great achievements.
Its strength, combativeness, powerful capacity for intervention and unity, which affirmed Intersindical as the country's main mass social organization, together with its prestige and influence, are inseparable from its fundamental characteristics, which determined its consequential action and its irreplaceable role in enlightening, organizing and mobilizing workers against exploitation, for freedoms and social progress.
Characteristics affirmed and rooted in its evolutionary process and that define it as a class, mass, democratic, united and independent trade union movement.
Characteristics built with the just orientation to unite the working class and workers to actively defend not only their immediate interests, but also their more general interests.
Characteristics that sustain it as a unique force, with an unparalleled life and intervention in the fight and defence of workers' interests in all stages of national life, remaining at the forefront of the present-day fights for the general rise of wages; against the deregulation of working time and for its reduction; against precarious jobs; for better working conditions and health and safety; for the repeal of the injurious norms in the labour law; but also for the defence and reinforcement of public services, in particular the National Health Service. Struggles that we salute, namely the day of decentralized national struggle, called by CGTP-Intersindical Nacional, for February 25, as well as the many others initiatives already announced, around March 8, such as equality week and the actions promoted by MDM; the struggle of the working youth on March 25th; the 25th of April 25; and the day of struggle on May Day.
The right-wing offensive, the Stability and Growth Pacts and the Pact of Aggression confronted a large and powerful struggle. A struggle that socially isolated the PSD/CDS government executing those policies and that, with the decisive action of our Party, lead to the government's defeat, creating conditions to recover wages, rights and incomes, and contain the long-lasting right-wing offensive, with PCP's struggle and initiative.
By developing the struggle, we will guarantee the defence of rights and wages, and ensure new advances and achievements in living and working conditions.
We live in a time when communists are called to redouble their work to fulfil their irreplaceable role alongside the workers and people, fighting exploitation and injustices.
As in the past, to be where the workers and masses are, to work, learn and take action with them, uniting efforts in the defence of their interests, continues to be, and today with greater determination, the slogan whose achievement is most important at a time when big capital and its agents are invested in constraining and confining the struggle and intervention of the workers’ organizations and trade-union movement, stigmatizing their action with the clear aim of paralysing it.
The defence of unity has been a battlefront that the trade union movement and the Communist workers and trade unionists have assumed repeatedly, given the long history of divisive action and affronts in Portugal, assuming the most varied forms and mobilizing powerful resources.
Big monopoly capital has always promoted divisions among workers, always finding its most solicitous allies in the political forces promoting the recovery of their dominion, lost in the April Revolution, namely the governments of PS, PSD and CDS.
Divisive action that includes the “open letters”, with the proclaimed yet thwarted objective of “breaking the spine of Intersindical”; the production of recurrent "manifestos" announcing the extinction of the working class and the end of the class struggle, or the end of trade unionism itself; the sophisticated proposals that restricted the trade union movement to the exclusive mission of civilizing capitalism; and the many theorizations to justify integrating the action of the workers' class organizations within the limits and order of the capitalist system and their activity exclusively to institutional action.
In the last three decades, with particular emphasis in the early 21st century, government after government, without distinction, appropriated the basic theses of neoliberalism, of permanent and never finished “structural reforms”, which always translated into greater deregulation of the labour market, greater layoff flexibility, more precariousness in labour relations, less social security, liquidation of collective bargaining, less public services, and successive labour laws with increasingly negative impacts on the lives of workers.
And always against the background of a brutal ideological offensive to divide workers and obscure the main contradiction opposing labour and capital, exploiting false contradictions with the aim of throwing workers against each other, private sector workers against those in the public sector, the young against the old, those with precarious ties against those who have conquered something with their struggle and are presented as privileged, of men against women.
Divide to reign and level down wages and rights, intensify the exploitation of labour and hide the brutal inequalities that such policies deepen, with increasing inequality in the distribution of income between capital and labour.
Throughout the Party's existence, communists have proven their commitment to build unity among the working class, workers and popular masses. They were and continue to be the great promoters of united forms of organisation, in particular trade unions.
It is true that communists – by the free will, choice and decision of workers – have great strength in the union structures. An influence and a role that, as we have already stated, has historical roots.
A role they play with pride, based on the trust of the workers, a trust cemented in selfless work in defence of their rights and their aspirations for a life with dignity. Selfless work of thousands of party members who guide their intervention by principles they have developed and respect – the defence of unity, autonomy and democracy in the organizations in which they participate. This is and has always been evident in their effort to establish cooperation and unity among the different currents of opinion present in the united trade union movement.
Yes, PCP has affirmed itself, confirming in practice, as the party that defends, like no other, the interests of the workers.
This reality is very present today in the work, in the institutions, in the action of communists in the trade union movement and in other workers' organizations, in their overall intervention.
A Party that continuously works to deepen its roots, with action, organization and careful and rigorous study of the living conditions of workers and people. A Party determined to give expression to workers’ problems and aspirations, to their struggle and the struggle of their organizations, workers who are the reason for its existence.
A determination that is now strengthened, redoubling efforts to develop an ample front of social struggle, involving the various classes and antimonopolistic strata, at a time when the serious economic and social problems arising from years of right-wing politics of the PS, PSD and CDS governments, are joined by the problems emerging from the Covid-19 epidemic and from the way big capital seizes this opportunity to intensify exploitation.
A reality that takes on a disturbing dimension, calling for solutions that cannot be postponed.
First off, and given the epidemic the Country is facing, we stress the urgent need for measures to quickly reinforce the public health structure; to ensure health and safety in the workplace and transportation of all those who every day have to leave home to provide essential services and maintain economic activity; to implement the protective standards established by the National Health Authority and to reinforce the NHS with professionals and technical resources; to respond to the significant increase in the number of inpatients with COVID-19, and all of the other patients with other diseases.
We need to proceed as quickly as possible with the vaccination process. This demands that the Country make the sovereign choice to diversify the purchase of WHO-approved vaccines from other pharmaceuticals, as well as the possibility of agreements that rely on the national production of those vaccines.
Portugal cannot accept that the selfish interests of big pharmaceutical companies prevail over the population's right to health and life.
Vaccines that should be considered a global public asset, accessible to all, because it was public funding in the billions and the contribution of thousands of doctors, scientists, nurses and patients, from all over the world, that allowed this scientific feat of discovering a vaccine in less than a year.
Portugal cannot accept the continued deterioration of the economic and social situation and the lack of necessary response by the PS Government, which associated with the Country's structural fragilities converge towards a scenario of sharp economic regression and a deterioration of the social situation, with increased exploitation and poverty, greater external dependence, and the concentration and centralization of capital.
A situation that PSD, CDS and their surrogates, Liberal Initiative and Chega, seek to take advantage of, riding the crisis to relaunch their policy of national disaster, increasingly relying on their projects of mutilation and subversion of the Constitution and on suggesting solutions that encase authoritarian and anti-democratic solutions.
Under the pretext of the epidemic, thousands of workers have been laid off and many others are at risk of being laid off, wages are cut, work schedules are changed and imposed by force, work rhythms intensified, precariousness promoted, while colossal sums of public funds are handed over to economic and financial groups and multinationals that have accumulated billions of euros in profits.
During this last year of pandemic, life continues to go very well for the most rich, for the barons of money and stock market speculation, for big capital, while life is more difficult for those who live from their work.
A worsening situation given the lack of necessary response to the developments at TAP, at the GALP Matosinhos refinery or at EDP's Sines plant, with the destruction of jobs, companies and productive capacity, demanding a State intervention to defend national interests.
Today, many thousands of workers, but also other popular strata such as micro and small entrepreneurs, face a difficult situation in their lives and a future of uncertainty and great unease that demands urgent measures and solutions to address this situation of social emergency, leaving no one without protection and livelihood.
That will only be possible with concrete measures like those PCP has presented in Parliament, namely during discussion of this year's State Budget. A wide range of proposals, some of which were approved and that must be implemented to respond to urgent problems with wages and social protection, namely in unemployment, health and education, among others. A vast set of measures that if considered in full would have made it possible to find the necessary solutions to respond to the country's most pressing problems in the various areas of economic, social and cultural life.
Recovery programs and billions of euros are announced in the form of a bazooka, this often-announced weapon that is unseen and aimed at the wrong target. What is being planned are blank bazooka shells aimed at solving the Country's real problems, but effective only in guaranteeing the means and support necessary for the same as usual, to the big economic and financial capital for the development of their self-serving businesses and projects.
However, instead of strengthening the means and resources to solve the country's problems, what is being introduced follows the same vision behind the dictatorship of the deficit. This continues to prevail, as shown by the 2020 budget execution, with a deficit about 3.7 billion euros below expected, despite the serious problems faced by workers and people, which truly shows the government is more concerned with meeting the budget targets imposed by the European Union than responding to the Country's health, economic and social problems.
The government cannot invoke lack of conditions to give the answers demanded by the Country's most immediate situation and the lives of workers and people.
Solutions exist, and many of those proposed by PCP were rejected because of convergence between PS and PSD. Measures that are essential to ensure more fiscal justice; defend jobs; regain public control of companies and strategic sectors indispensable to the development of the country; create a public network of social facilities, in particular homes and day-care centres; substantially extend public investment; or increase all pensions.
Therefore, it is fair to say that a comprehensive response to national problems can only gain expression with another policy, a patriotic and left-wing alternative policy capable of ensuring economic development and social progress.
Portugal needs a new policy that has as one of its central axes valuing work and workers.
A policy to guarantee full employment; promote the development of productive forces and national production; reduce sharp social inequalities, strongly influenced by low wages, low pensions, precariousness and work without rights. A policy to fully execute the State's social functions and affirm national sovereignty.
Portugal needs other solutions that rely on assuming the need to value wages and workers' rights as a decisive issue for the country. The general increase in wages, including the National Minimum Wage, which remains below what is necessary and possible. A national emergency, for a fairer distribution of wealth, to stimulate the national economy, to strengthen Social Security and ensure better pensions in the future.
This all depends on valuing who works, but also who worked in the past, guaranteeing the real and general value of pensions during the next years, as well as the right to a full pension, without penalties, for workers with 40 years of contributions.
This depends on fighting labour precariousness, guaranteeing that to each permanent job post corresponds an effective employment contract, in both the public administration and private sector.
Depends on ensuring time to live, reconciling professional, personal and family life, fighting schedule deregulation, reducing work time to 35 hours weekly for all workers, preventing, protecting and redressing shift work.
Depends on repealing the injurious norms of labour legislation, restoring the principle of more favourable treatment, and prohibiting the expiration of collective labour agreements.
Depends on fighting inequalities and discriminations, guaranteeing the rights of men and women, of the young and old, of all workers regardless of ethnicity or nationality.
Depends on ensuring a just fiscal policy, based on an effective taxation of big capital and a reduction of taxes for workers and indirect taxes.
On an expansion of social protection, with a reinforcement of the Public Social Security System, capable of ensuring the universalization and increase of family benefits and a reinforcement of social benefits replacing labour, giving the necessary answer to situations of unemployment and disease.
PCP needs to continuously reinvigorate and deepen its roots with action, organization and careful and rigorous study of workers' living and working conditions, interpreting and giving expression to their problems and aspirations, their struggle and the struggle of their organizations, workers are the reason for PCP's existence.
And that demands a commitment of us all, of today's communists, to reinforce the Party's organization. To make the Centenary a moment to affirm that connection and foundation. To strengthen its struggle and action is one of the present's great objectives, namely realizing the decision to create 100 new workplace cells, as well as 100 new comrades responsible for these cells.
Objectives that require the whole party's intervention and everyone's militant commitment.
We face the future, with the living memory of the path travelled these hundred years of the Party's existence, a Party we proudly belong to, safeguarding the compass that brought us here and that we want to keep pointed towards the future. The compass of the communist ideal showing us the right way to defend the interests of the workers and our people and, on the horizon, the construction of a society with greater justice, fraternity and solidarity – a socialist society.
