Massive Demonstrations Challenge Anti-Worker Polices in Portugal, Spain

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http://peoplesworld.org/massive-demonstrations-challenge-anti-worker-polices-in-portugal-spain/

In Portugal (population 11 million) on February 11, more than 300,000 workers turned out in the historic Terreiro do Paço (Palace Square) in Lisbon to protest neo-liberal policies imposed by the coalition government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho. This government, composed of the conservative Social Democratic and People's parties, was elected in June 2011 when voters abandoned the ruling Socialist Party of then Prime Minister Jose Socrates en masse, as a protest against its own austerity polities. (In Portugal, the Socialist Party represents what would be called social democracy in other countries; the Social Democratic Party is a right wing party). The new government merely intensified those policies. The result has been extreme suffering for millions of Portuguese, as wages and pensions have been slashed, thousands of public sector workers have been laid off and the safety net shredded, all quid pro quo for a projected new $103 million European Union organized bailout.

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In Spain (population 46 million) the dynamics are now similar. Although Spain did not have as big a sovereign debt proportional to its Gross Domestic Product as Portugal, it had been suffering from a very high unemployment rate (now more than 22 percent). The social democratic government of former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) began to implement austerity measures imposed on the country by international monopoly capital. This led to the electoral drubbing of the Socialist Workers' Party on November 20 of last year, with the conservative People's Party winning an absolute legislative majority and its leader, Mariano Rajoy, taking over the prime minister's office. Rajoy has taken his victory as a mandate to roll back a wide range of progressive laws, including ones regarding regional autonomy for ethnic minority areas, secularization of the school curriculum and reproductive rights. Now, workers' rights are the target.

The labor reform, decreed on February 10, contains almost everything big bosses would dream of. It will be much easier to fire people, because employers found to have fired people illegally will have to pay their victims much less in back remuneration (33 days maximum instead of 45). It will be easier for employers to modify conditions of work in their own favor. Workers on long-term contracts will be in danger of being replaced by younger workers. People receiving unemployment compensation will be forced to do volunteer community service. All this is being done under the pretext of creating new job opportunities for the unemployed, although most observers think the result will be more unemployment, not less.

When he announced the labor reforms, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy quipped, "This will cost me a general strike"; a remark now gleefully quoted by the Spanish left and trade unions. On Sunday, February 20, an estimated one million people hit the streets in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and 53 other Spanish cities to protest the labor law "reforms". In Spain, there was unity between unions of the CCOO (Workers' Commissions), close to the United Left (IU) in which the Communist Party plays a major role, and those of the UGT (General Union of Workers), close to the PSOE, so both contributed to the mobilization.