A BWI delegation led by General Secretary Ambet Yuson recently conducted a mission to Portugal. He was accompanied by Vincente Sanchez General Secretary of CCOO-FECOMA; Marilia Medes, International Director of UNIA; and Coen van der Veer, Regional Representative of BWI Europe. The delegation visited the office of FEVICCOM affiliated to CGTP to discuss areas of future cooperation. The delegation was met by Fátima Messias, Secretary- General and members of her team.
One of the key issues discussed during the meeting was the current political situation in which the centre left minority government were forced to make separate deals with the opposition parties. The formation of the new government under the PS (Socialist Party) is expected to continue along the same line, but there will be more influence from the left bloc, as they gained electoral seats in the recent elections. Similar to other elections in Europe, Portugal also saw right-wing parties winning Parliamentary seats leading to further political fragmentation and instability. In the recent elections the voter turnout was a dismal 46.5 percent signalling voter disinterest.
The FEVICCOM leadership pointed out that the low legal wage and the small difference in income for skilled workers had led to an “brain and hands drain” for Portugal. In addition, the union expressed of the country’s ability to have enough young people with proper vocational and educational training for the jobs that are necessary.
Fátima Messias told the delegation that the Portuguese government was “forced” to sell the publicly owned national energy producers since the Troika insisted that this should be open to the private market. The government put it on the market but ironically the only “acceptable” bid was from a state-owned Chinese multinational company.
Following this, the discussion led to the situation of the regional labour market of Penamaior, Portugal, where a number of small and medium sized furniture companies was dominant in the region until Ikea built a larger plant. and had considerable but no positive influence on the wage and working conditions.