One day after negotiations regarding the executive’s draft project failed in terms of social consultation, Paulo Raimundo reiterated: “It was not even necessary to have had the outcome that it had yesterday [segunda-feira] in social concentration to reach this conclusion, but yesterday was the end, it was over. The Government must admit defeat, the strength and unity of the workers defeated the labor package. Period, paragraph. It’s not worth wasting any more time on this”, he considered, launching a provocation regarding Chega: “It is necessary to confront Chega with its daily contradictions. If the Government wants to insist and try to impose, with the help or not of some demagoguery and ‘exchange’ from Chega, if it wants to go that way, it will. But it will have to accept the consequences of trying to impose a labor package that has been rejected”, he warned.
It is already expected that the President of the Republic, António José Seguro, will reject this project if it reaches Belém, after having assured that he would not enact changes to the labor law without an agreement in social consultation, Raimundo considered that “there is no need” for the head of State “to be confronted with legislation that is defeated and rejected from the outset”.
Approximation points in the cost of living, public policies and Health
The Bloc had already met with unions, namely the UGT and CGTP trade unions. The PCP had met with the CGTP and sectoral unions, such as education and agriculture, as well as joining the collective political struggle to stop the labor package. The two parties agreed on the proposal for a 100% lay-off for those affected by the bad weather in Portugal and are, as DN knows, in line with several national issues, such as the impact of the cost of living and inflation, public housing policies and, naturally, with increased attention to the Labor Law that the Government intends to change.
The Bloc will intend to meet with various parties, from PCP to PAN, Livre and PS and in this proximity will seek points of contact. José Manuel Pureza highlighted that the request for a meeting arose in a context of “attack” by the Government and the right.
The blocker said he had identified a wide range of “points of convergence” with the communists, namely in the “fight against the revision of the Labor Code” but also in matters related to the increase in the cost of living or health. Purity also rebelled against global conflicts carried out outside international law, an issue on which the two parties converge.
“That was the meaning of this meeting and we left here with the conviction that we did the right thing in coming to talk to the PCP”, he stated, reiterating the news that the DN anticipated on Monday.
Pureza was also asked whether this meeting was a consequence of having rejected sectarianism when he was elected BE’s national coordinator, with the blocist responding “obviously yes” and highlighting that he insisted that the first inter-party meeting of the new leadership be with the PCP.
The Health pact requested by António José Seguro also received a response from Pureza. Again aiming to the right, asking for single combat to the left. “For many years there has been a pact for Health, which is the pact that destroys the National Health Service, that disqualifies it and that is the pact that has prevailed. BE will always, but always, be in a perspective that was the one that, in fact, brought António Arnaut and João Semedo together: with the perspective of saving the National Health Service and making it a qualified place within the scope of Portuguese democracy, the greatest place in Portuguese democracy”, he stated.
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