They fill squares and avenues with the red flag of struggle!
Take the floor in the plenary sessions in companies.
Discuss their list of demands.
Negotiate collective bargaining.
Sign petitions.
Confront bosses with their just demands.
Hold rallies, marches, demonstrations, stoppages and strikes.
Shout slogans.
Stop production in companies and services.
Fight for their rights and for the rights of all anti-monopoly classes and strata.
Their example animates the struggle of all.
This is the working class and workers, the driving force of the mass struggle, of the transformative struggle, of the class struggle that opposes the antagonistic interests under capitalism.
A force that doesn't fall for fashions or ditties. That is based on its strength in unity, in its organisation, in the rightness of the concrete objectives for which it mobilises, integrated within the wider struggle for an alternative policy and a political alternative.
A struggle for better wages, that national emergency that many continue to hold back, for working conditions, a reduction and regulation of hours, for a 35h work week without loss of salary, for an end to precariousness, for a valorization of careers and professions, for the reduction of the retirement age, for better meal allowances (when there are any), for the right to transport or uniform, for the rights of young workers to combat discrimination against women, for the trade union rights to collective bargaining.
By its dimension, combativeness, dynamism and persistence, the workers' struggle has assumed an prominent role in the mass struggle developed impetuously in the last four years and that shall continue.
With great struggles, among which May Day, the struggle has developed as several actions of national convergence of mobilization, of voicing demands, of clarification and struggle, but began in the companies and workplaces of the public sector and the private sector, there where the hardest, the most violent, the most decisive confrontation of the class struggle takes place.
In this immense river of struggles, which we greatly value and applaud, that converges in the demand for a better life, we find
miners,
glass workers,
cork workers,
metal workers,
chemical workers,
the textile, clothing and shoe workers,
cement workers,
auto workers,
electrical workers,
the food, meat and preserve workers,
workers in the paper industry,
workers in road, rail, maritime and air transportation,
in commerce, distribution and logistics,
in the contact centres,
the energy sector,
the hotel industry,
in canteens and dining areas,
in private hospitals,
in the banking sector,
in culture and heritage,
in the motorways,
in the postal service and telecomunications,
in the water sector,
in the social sector,
in the media, namely journalists,
in the central, regional and local public administration,
the nurses,
the doctors,
the diagnostic technicians,
the pharmacists,
the technical, administrative and operational assistants,
the teachers and non-teaching workers,
the cleaning and garage collection workers,
the security workers,
the fishing workers,
the pilots,
the civilian personnel of the Armed Forces,
the firefighters,
the security forces and the military,
the legal professionals.
So many struggles, so many workers, so many demands – one structure that unites them. The United Trade Union Movement, the Trade Unions, the Associations of Trade Unions, the Federations and the largest, most active and most determined social organisation in our country, CGTP–IN, the great trade union confederation of Portuguese workers, which we warmly welcome.
This force is expressed in businesses and in the streets with the joy of those who know they are contributing to advances and progress, to individual and collective rights, to raising social and political consciousness, a determining element for the revolutionary transformation that is indispensable.
Workers produce all wealth. They are the driving levers of the present and the future.
When some, who at times present themselves with seemingly inexhaustible energy, lose heart in the face of the complexities of the struggle and the ideological offensive, the working class and the workers are here to patiently resist and continue the struggle!
When others, looking askance and impatiently at those who persevere in the organized struggle, pull ready made recipes out of a hat with rocket-fuelled radicalism, here are those who are engaged in the essential, decisive work of structuring, winning many battles, consolidating organization.
When still others, following the lure of what seems possible, seek to involve the masses with the litany of pragmatism to justify agreements that favour increases of exploitation, here are those who know that the responsible action is to guarantee a fair remuneration for workers.
And that is exactly why capital fears neither these “some” nor those “others”, but directs all its class hatred against the organized struggle and the organizations that promote it.
In PCP, we know who we can count on. Always.
In the continuing struggle, the working class and the workers know well that they can always count on the unwavering confidence of the PCP.
Long live the struggle of the working class and workers.
Long live PCP!
