Here we are in this great initiative in the context of the action «More strength to the workers».
An action that reinforced our presence in companies and workplaces and where we contacted thousands of workers.
A work that is important to continue and intensify, at the gates of companies and workplaces, but above all inside and inserted in the concrete problems and in the definition of the ways to overcome them.
This is our path, not because it looks good, not to meet a timetable, but because it is the strength of the workers and their struggle that constitute the decisive factor for the course of life of the workers themselves and of society in general.
The more the workers assume their strength, the greater their struggle, the better conditions there will be to increase wages, guarantee collective bargaining, defend rights and valorise public services.
The more they are aware of their strength, the less impact will have the ideological offensive that aims to convince that there is no alternative to the current course of injustice and inequality, for which there will always be justification, either the crisis, or the epidemic, and now the war.
Because, contrary to what defenders and servants of capitalism try to make believe, this is not the end of History.
Reality can be transformed and the engine is, and continues to be, mass struggle.
Today, as always, what determines everyday life is the correlation of forces between labour and capital.
It is this relationship that explains the advances and setbacks of one and the other, as we can see:
The same Government that a few months ago claimed that pension increases would be the end of Social Security, was forced to swallow what it said and increased pensions, late and insufficient increases, but which the struggle forced.
The same Government that claimed that wage increases would contribute to the inflationary spiral, had to put forward a 1% increase for public administration. Short increases, very short, but which the workers' struggle forced.
It was like that also in the case of housing. It is true that what the Government put forward is nothing but pageantry and propaganda and that the package of measures «More Housing» does not solve the concrete problems of people, of families, and worse, it continues to protect profits and speculation, with more tax benefits to feed the banks and real estate funds, but it was the struggle that forced taking some measures.
Just as it was in the case of a windfall tax on profits. The Government's initiatives, in practice, are little more than nothing, but it is not indifferent that it felt the obligation to advance something, in view of just popular indignation regarding the scandalous profits of economic groups.
The same Government that said until a few months ago that food prices were the fault of the war, that it could do nothing about inflation, but that, due to the struggle, was forced to take measures.
Limited measures, it is a fact, which do not face the increase in food prices that continues, on average, around 20% and that will continue to increase.
Without attacking speculation, without fixing and cutting down prices, zero VAT is a zero for those who work.
A Government obliged to respond but with the ingeniousness to find solutions always in favour of the interests of economic groups.
Always when it comes to defending the interests of economic groups and attacking Labour, there we have the Government in the first line of battle, but let us be fair, it is not alone, whenever it comes to supporting the interests of economic groups, PS, PSD, CDS, Chega and IL, are there united, in tune and convergence.
A lot of shouting, but at the end of the day, the resolution is always: Yes to Capital, No to Labour!
Witness the so-called "decent" work agenda.
The employers made a lot of fuss to deceive us, contented with maintaining the expiry of collective bargaining and the end of the principle of more favourable treatment for workers.
Decent work, that is what we were sold.
But is it decent work tied to working hours that do not take into account the evolution of science and technology and effective increases in productivity?
Is it decent to pay overtime or compensation for dismissal at miserly amounts?
Is it decent that effective jobs are occupied by workers with precarious contracts?
Is it decent to curb trade union action in companies?
The flexibilities, the hour bank schemes and adaptability that disrupt working hours and prevent the reconciliation of professional and personal life, is this the decent path?
Is the devaluation of work and workers, their wages and the rights of those who have worked a lifetime and are faced with miserly pensions decent?
But it was in the midst of so much indignity that in so many companies, in so many workplaces, wages were raised and employment contracts were established.
And the struggle is there, in companies and workplaces and on so many other fronts. So it was on May Day and in multiple actions called by the CGTP-IN in defence of workers, the workers' trade union central that we salute from here.
We keep on hearing that investment is weak because of taxes, that the country is not moving ahead because of taxes and even, imagine, that wages are low, not because of exploitation, but because of taxes.
But the truth is different and more cruel, successive governments have chosen over the years to lower taxes on big capital and load them on the workers. The weight of the Corporate Tax continues to fall, and the weight of the Income Tax and, above all, the VAT, does not stop climbing.
But the problem is not taxes, but fiscal injustice.
Taxes are necessary, if that was their option, to provide the State with the means to guarantee public services, and they should be an instrument for redistributing wealth.
Bankers, speculators, shareholders of large companies, multinationals are not in the same boat as workers, pensioners, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, farmers.
What they aim is to go even further in transfers from Labour to Capital. Who does not remember the Single Social Tax (TSU) “reduction” operation, where the money that belongs to workers would be used to pay wages of workers. With my father's pants I am a man too...
Lower VAT on gas, electricity, telecommunications and taxation on labour income.
But charge Capital and strongly, what kind of justice is this where banks that earn hundreds of millions of euros pay less taxes than a pensioner?
What kind of justice is this where those who earn millions pay pennies to the tax authorities and those who live on their salary, retirement or pension, are fundamentally those who support the country's tax revenue?
And above all, let wages be raised, that is the great national emergency.
This is the big question of our days, this is the great and fair demand of the workers, rejecting the idea of transforming what is certain into uncertain, that is to say, replacing salary with bonuses, cards, subsidies or other expedients.
A struggle that is there, that will continue and that will have, through the initiative of the CGTP, in every company and workplace, its concrete expression. It will be like this every day, like this it will be on the day of struggle of June 28.
The struggle will force an end to the scandalous profits and dividends for shareholders, where the executive directors of large companies earn 36 times more than the workers of the companies they manage.
In the first quarter of 2023, banks profited €10.7 million per day. While so many people struggle with difficulties and make so many sacrifices to be able to pay and maintain their home.
It will be the struggle that will lead to the effective control of the prices of essential goods, because it is not enough to slow down the increase in prices, when the people can no longer bear those that are in place.
It will be the struggle that will force the repeal of the expiry of collective bargaining.
The full restoration of the principle of more favourable treatment for workers.
The elimination of the rule that presumes the acceptance of dismissal by accepting compensation.
The reduction to 35 hours for all workers.
The effective regularisation of all precarious situations.
Strengthening of rights in the night and shift work regime.
Appropriate responses to labour accidents and occupational diseases.
Matters on which the PCP tabled proposals and on which PS, PSD, Chega, and IL interrupted the performance of the supposed opposition to, in representation of the interests of big capital, stop these proposals.
Whenever there is a choice between the interests of the workers and the people and the interests of economic groups, there we have PS, PSD, IL, Chega and CDS raising the flag of Capital.
They sleep peacefully with injustice and inequality, they live serenely with the reality of the labour world, as Prime Minister António Costa would say, it is what it is.
But this is what it is, 70% of the jobs created with precarious bonds; an average of 41 hours of work per week; one million and 800 thousand shift workers, at night, on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, with all that this means in everyone’s life; 3 million workers earning up to a thousand euros gross per month; 2 million people in poverty, of which more than 300 thousand are children.
All this, while the main economic groups in Portugal had, in 2022, 20 million euros in profit per day and the richest 5% concentrate 42% of all the wealth created in the country.
Faced with this reality, given the evidence that the path being followed by the PS Government does not serve the country and, in terms of defending the interests of economic groups, it is always accompanied by PSD, CDS, Chega and IL; the workers, people, democrats and patriots are faced with an option and a challenge, which is defined today and which will mark the course of those who work and live here and the course of the country itself.
Keeping the command of all this in the hands of economic groups and their interests or taking the destiny of our lives into own hands, breaking with right-wing policies and taking on the challenge of building a patriotic and left-wing alternative.
This is what the country needs.
A policy and a government that is not a Government of the PS, nor of the PSD and its surrogates, but rather a Government based on the mobilisation and participation of the workers and popular masses and which in their leadership and composition must count on the communists and all those who want to implement a policy that defends national interests and places workers and populations at the centre of its action.
The PCP is the bearer of the alternative, we are the real opposition to the Government and its policy, we are the ones who stand up to the reactionary, trigger-happy and old projects that are being promoted.
The challenge before us, and for which we count on all those who want to support and implement it, is an alternative policy that does not condemn the country, either by the PS, or by the PSD and its surrogates, to the same options of right-wing policies.
It is now very clear that the improvement of living conditions is deeply linked to the reinforcement of the PCP.
When the PCP weakens, the life of the Portuguese and of those who work and live here, suffers a setback.
When the PCP strengthens the lives of workers, populations, and the country advance.
This is the central question that arises.
At the National Conference we stated:
«Reality also contains potential inseparable from the acquisition of class awareness, from the struggle and from the experience of struggle, the use of which requires a deeper knowledge of the situation of the workers, which contributes to their unity based on their class interests, regardless of the generations, professions, ethnic origin or national origin.”
It is in this direction, it was with this intention that we launched the action «More strength to the workers», that we reaffirmed our commitment to their class interests, that we decided to deepen ties and connections with those who work, that we aimed to deepen the relationship and intervention with the workers in companies and workplaces.
It was with this goal in mind that we had previously set the goal of creating one hundred new cells and making one hundred new comrades responsible for companies and workplaces, a task that we successfully completed, and which we now need to follow up on.
As we have always said, going there, contacting the workers at the company gates, alerting and denouncing problems and exploitation is very important. But what is decisive is being there, organising the workers from within, responding with the class struggle to the offensive of big capital.
What can make the difference is to organise the workers' huge strength, and with it to demand concrete rights, wages, decent working hours, working conditions, bonds, but also the distribution of wealth that the workers produce.
The action «More strength for workers» is not limited to this initiative. The commitment we assume here is honouring our heritage of struggle, confirming our nature as a Party of the working class and of all workers, to continue strengthening the Party in companies and workplaces, recruiting more, making more comrades responsible, pointing to a style of permanent intervention by the cells based on the concrete problem, the concrete reality, with the workers.
Exploitation is inherent to capitalism but not forever. Here we are, communists, democrats and patriots, to fight and defeat it. With the confidence that with the organised strength of the workers it will be possible.
In this struggle for the end of exploitation, for a land without masters, for the construction of a society without exploited or exploiters.
The Socialist and Communist society.
Long live the strength and struggle of workers!
Long live the JCP!
Long live the PCP!
