Just as the country’s financial press picks up on the IMF’s Global Financial Outlook, and how it refers to areas where Portugal “could do better”, CGTP union leader Arménio Carlos has called for a national demonstration in Lisbon on November 18.
The leader of the confederation of Portugal’s trades unions says the protest is aimed at public sector workers, just as much as those in the private sector, young people, the retired and unemployed.
Says Carlos, it is a struggle for the “appreciation of work and workers” – a demand for the “repositioning and conquest” of rights, and a fight against “injustices and inequalities”.
At the same time as calling the national initiative, Carlos launched a countrywide petition against precarity – unstable jobs that are still a hallmark of Portugal’s recovering labour market.
Bizarrely, less than two hours after Arménio Carlos sounded his battlecry, the IMF presented its new World Economic Outlook in which dinheirovivo explains it “said it is possible to go further in the facilitation of dismissals”.
Says the financial news site: “Portugal has a problem of low productivity and because of this it has to bring in more reforms to the labour market to facilitate hirings and accelerate firings”.
In other words, that cushion of job security that has been losing feathers is now in danger of becoming pretty much threadbare.
Adds DV: “The IMF maintains its broad outlook for the Portuguese economy”, in that it expects the country to grow 2.5% this year, slowing in 2018 to 2%, with unemployment falling from 9.7% now to 9% next year.
But it stresses that the organisation “alerts the government” to the need to make the labour market “more flexible” in order to “take full advantage of existing human resources”.
The IMF also found time to say that “some countries have margin to improve the business environment and quality of public administration”, pointing in this case, says DinheiroVivo, at Italy and Portugal.
