The recent scandals after scandals in the government of António Costa show well how the “budgetary rigor” of the Government is only to justify attacks against workers and public services such as health and education, and there is no “rigor” in the way it treats the rich and their managers. The combative struggle of the teachers for justice and dignity of their career shows the path that is necessary to travel to impose an alternative against the Costa government.
By: Flor Neves
two weights and two measures
The different governments headed by António Costa have shown well that their “budgetary rigor” only means that above all the needs of the majority of the population is the payment of the debt (more than 50% of SO2023 [Orçamento do Estado] is to pay for this item) and compliance with the deficit and the Brussels rules. For this, the Health and Education budget and the payment of salaries are cut, either directly or through “captivations”, which prevent the application of part of what was voted in the OE [Presupuesto del Estado]. This budgetary rigor is the same one that serves as a justification for the refusal to update salaries according to inflation, causing workers and pensioners to face true cuts in income today, when survival is a daily challenge.
The Government that has a heavy hand on the workers and small businessmen is the same one that allows everything to the rich and their administrators on duty. Today, for each year of work, the indemnity is 14 days of salary, since Costa essentially maintained the setback in this field imposed by Passos Coelho. But he considers it correct that the law allows the administrator of the TAP [Transporte Aéreo Portugal] receive 500,000 euros in compensation; this is particularly serious in a company that attacks the rights and collective bargaining of its employees and left workers in the lurch (even with back wages) due to Groundforce’s insolvency.
If the duality of criteria is one of the shocking elements in all the recent cases in the Costa Government, another element that draws attention is that compensation such as that of TAP is “legally” enshrined. The fact that the Government itself, as TAP’s majority shareholder, covers these types of laws only shows that, as Marx and Engels wrote in the communist manifesto, governments are administration committees of the interests of the bourgeoisie. For this reason, if this type of “million-dollar compensation” is not an exception, neither in the TAP nor in other large companies, it is aggravated in this case by its public nature, since it is the taxpayers’ taxes that pay for the cronyism between the bourgeoisie and their managers on duty. There is no money for the workers, but there is money for the rich and their lackeys.
At the same time, the supposed rigor that workers are required to carry out their functions and duties to the State does not apply to the election of the Government Secretaries of State. There are two weights and two measures that make any worker break the lid.
A deaf war: the dispute of power and the “European bazooka”
It is an illusion to think that the duplicity of criteria and the “Jobs for the boys” are something restricted to the PS and the respective governments. This is a reality in all governments that, regardless of their political color, alternate in their role of managing the interests of the bourgeoisie and the creation of laws and contracts (remember the Public Private Associations of the Highways, for example), which feed the large capitalist groups and their administrators.
But, then, why are we now seeing this large number of cases appear? In the first place, on the surface, we can say that the right, in the voices of its different parties and through the press, intends to wear down the absolute majority of the PS, with the aim of preparing its rise to power as soon as possible. But it is necessary to go deeper.
And the underlying problem is a context of economic crisis that has already gripped Germany, the heart of the EU. In this context, Portugal is a totally dependent country, it does not control what will happen to the country in times of recession and inflation, since it does not have its own currency and does not decide on the economic policies that affect it. Furthermore, its economic growth in recent years is dependent on tourism, a volatile and externally determined sector.
It is in this context that the divisions between the bourgeoisie are increasingly important and polarized, especially when the Portuguese bourgeoisie depends on the extortion of the State apparatus and the privileges it derives from it to achieve its million-dollar profits.
The PRR that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa spoke so much about in his New Year’s message, the famous European bazooka, is the center of survival, reinforcement or destruction of the main bourgeois sectors in Portugal. In this sense, control of the State apparatus is essential to access these funds, which more than “develop the country” with a collective project -which the bourgeoisie does not have- only serve to strengthen one sector or another and their respective businesses. . Who will benefit? The bankers linked to European imperialism? The construction sector? Green energies or the most polluting sectors? What will be the country’s bet? It is this deaf war of dispute over the destination of the PRR money that is behind the current war for control of the state apparatus and its power.
New Year, Same Problems: Teachers Show the Way
At this beginning of the year, workers are faced with challenges very similar to those they faced last year: inflation that leads to a real reduction in wages and increasing misery and hunger; or the housing problem, the result of real estate speculation, with particular incidence in cities such as Lisbon, but aggravated by the ECB’s policy of increasing interest, which caused housing loans to skyrocket and put evictions on the order of the day and the return of the increase of the homeless; the SNS in a state of increasing agony, due to the successive budget cuts in basic material, but above all in working conditions and decent wages that allow maintaining the workers of the sector in the public sector and in the country, today completely exhausted; a public education that, in addition to the enormous precariousness and the reduction of salaries, product of the successive freezes and blockades in the career, today faces a new and very harsh attack from the Costa government, with the institution of a teacher contracting system for “ profiles” (and not by objective professional graduation criteria as it is currently), making clear the subjectivity of the criteria to be applied and the resulting “wedge” effect; the environmental crisis without any government project that seeks to move forward to overcome it, while having a former CEO of an oil company as minister, clearly demonstrating his environmental concerns.
Unify the struggles, build a general strike
If the problems are the same, the struggles that marked the end of 2022, such as that of the Autoeuropa workers, the student occupations for the climate or that of the teachers, which also marks this month of January, give us new encouragement and sense of hope. It is these struggles, supported by the democratic decisions of the working class, but also bold and walking the path of class independence against governments and bosses, that show the path we have to follow.
It will be a year in which we will need to redouble our forces to confront governments and big capitalists. For this reason, several separate struggles, whether by teachers or other sectors, are not enough. The harshness of António Costa’s absolute majority and the seriousness of the situation that the working class will have to face demand ever greater unity between the different sectors and struggles. Only advancing in the unity of the struggles will we be able to put the absolute majority government of the PS against the wall and pave the way for a general strike that demands that the rich pay for inflation, that guarantees the professional appreciation of teachers and other employees that imposes price controls and the nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy, particularly the energy sector such as EDP, GALP and REN at the service of the collective social and environmental interest.
Article published in https://emluta.net, 1/17/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.