Labor Day is celebrated across the country this Wednesday, with the CGTP and UGT trade unions promoting demonstrations and initiatives to value workers.
The CGTP Labor Day celebrations in Lisbon began this morning with the 1.º de Maio international race, starting and finishing at the 1.º de Maio Stadium.
In the afternoon, starting at 2:30 p.m., the trade union center promotes the traditional parade between Martim Moniz and Alameda D. Afonso Henriques, where at the end there will be a rally with the new general secretary of the trade union center, Tiago Oliveira, as the main speaker. who succeeded Isabel Camarinha in February.
In Porto, a demonstration is planned in the afternoon on Avenida dos Aliados.
The union center celebrations also take place throughout the country, covering, according to the published program, Azores, Aveiro, Beja, Braga, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Évora, Faro, Guarda, Leiria, Madeira, Santarém, Setúbal, Viana do Castelo, Vila Real and Viseu, with demonstrations, popular festivals and sporting events.
Two weeks ago, the general secretary of CGTP, Tiago Oliveira, said he was convinced that both the 25th of April and the 1st of May this year are “great moments of affirmation for workers” by increasing wages and combating precariousness .
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The UGT union center is celebrating May 1st this year in Vila Real, in Praça do Município in this city of Trás-os-Montes.
In the airtime available on your site, the general secretary, Mário Mourão, says that the UGT demands that the Government comply with the increases in salaries and pensions and that it “remains available to reinforce consultation and social dialogue, but if necessary also for the fight”. Regarding private companies, he stated that “they cannot continue to earn millions just for shareholders and administrators”.
Mourão also called for unionization, “especially to young people and women”, as “nothing has been acquired”.
The celebrations in Vila Real begin at 11:30 am with sporting and cultural activities and there will be speeches by political and union leaders at 3 pm, notably Mário Mourão.
May 1st, International Workers’ Day, had its origins in the events in Chicago 137 years ago, when there was a day of struggle to reduce working hours to eight hours, which was violently repressed by the authorities of the States United States of America, which killed dozens of workers and sentenced four union leaders to hang.
50 years ago, in Portugal, the celebration of May 1st, just one week after the April 25th revolution, was a great popular demonstration.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets showing their joy and with demands such as ‘the right to strike’, ‘end the war now’ or ‘return of soldiers’, according to photographs from the time.
In Lisbon, it is estimated that 500,000 people attended the 1974 Labor Day demonstration.