In Portugal, \u201csocialist\u201d prime minister Jos\u00e9 S\u00f3crates is instituting savage cuts \u2013 the biggest in Europe after Greece. He wants to cut state spending to from 8.3 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent by 2013. Unemployment already stands at 10.1 per cent and would be driven way above this by such measures.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese workers have forced their union leaders to oppose the government\u2019s plans. The 300,000 strong Common Front public sector union has called a one-day strike on 4 March against the government\u2019s pay freeze. The UGT, Portugal\u2019s second-largest union and traditionally closer to the Socialists, has come out in support of the strike.<\/p>\n
Manuel Carvalho da Silva, leader of the CGTP union federation, told Reuters: \u201cI say a scenario like the strike in Greece is necessary.\u201d That would be a great step forward, but da Silva made no explicit call for a general strike and failed to mention a date.<\/p>\n
A general strike of workers from both public and private sectors would be the first in Portugal in over a decade.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Portugal, \u201csocialist\u201d prime minister Jos\u00e9 S\u00f3crates is instituting savage cuts \u2013 the biggest in Europe after Greece. He wants to cut state spending to from 8.3 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent by 2013. Unemployment already stands at 10.1 per cent and would be driven way above this by such measures. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-4020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}