Trade union demonstration ‘For Social Europe - Jobs with rights’

In October 2007, between 150,000 and 200,000 people participated in a demonstration in Lisbon under the motto ‘For Social Europe – Jobs with rights’, organised by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers. The event coincided with an informal European Council meeting organised by the Portuguese EU Presidency. At a Tripartite Social Summit on the same day, the European social partners presented a joint analysis of the challenges facing EU labour markets.

Portugal held the EU Council Presidency in the second half of 2007. On 18 October 2007, the presidency held an informal European Council summit involving heads of state and government in Lisbon and on the same day organised an informal Tripartite Social Summit, bringing together the social partners, members of the European Commission and representatives of national governments. The General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses, CGTP) organised a demonstration outside the venue of the summit, under the slogan ‘For Social Europe – Jobs with rights’. While police estimated a turnout of about 150,000 participants, CGTP stated that more than 200,000 people took part in the biggest demonstration in 20 years in Portugal.

Background to demonstration

The reason for the demonstration in October was the outcome of a resolution taken on 2 March 2007 at a previous CGTP demonstration gathering around 120,000 people from the public and private sectors (PT0703039I). At that rally, CGTP announced further actions, including two more national protests during Portugal’s EU Presidency in the second half of 2007. The first action took place when EU social affairs ministers met in July 2007 in the city of Guimarães in northwestern Portugal. The second, a national demonstration, was set to take place during the EU summit in Lisbon in October 2007.

Issues in focus

The issues in focus at the demonstration on 18 October included ongoing reforms of European and national labour markets. Among the banners displayed by demonstrators near the conference hall hosting the summit were slogans such as the following: ‘Jobs with rights – Against flexicurity’ and ‘Portugal won’t move forward with flexicurity’.

Despite promoting national and European goals, the demonstration was mostly a national one, insofar as it was organised by CGTP only, and it mainly involved Portuguese people. Given the large numbers of participants, the demonstration was widely considered a success. It also presented an opportunity for people from elsewhere in Europe to express criticisms of European labour market policies and to call for a social Europe.

Government and social partner views

At the informal Tripartite Social Summit’, the EU social partners – the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), BusinessEurope (formerly UNICE), the European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest (CEEP) and the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (Union Européenne de l’artisanat et des petites et moyennes enterprises, UEAPME) – agreed a joint analysis of the ‘key challenges facing European labour markets’. This included an element of agreement on some aspects of the guiding principles for labour market reforms (EU0711019I), including flexicurity.

The Portuguese Prime Minister, José Sócrates, described the EU-level social partners’ text on labour market modernisation and flexicurity as a ‘historic moment’ in labour relations. Although the President of the Confederation of Portuguese Industry (Confederação da Indústria Portuguesa, CIP), Fancisco van Zeller, welcomed the social partners’ positions on flexicurity, he stated that the text was not that historic, as it did not take any further specific step. The Secretary General of the General Workers’ Union (União Geral de Trabalhadores, UGT), João Proença, commented that the agreement concerned European labour market challenges, but not exactly flexicurity, which he considered to be an issue for future discussion within the EU Member States, together with the social partners.

CGTP demands in the wake of the demonstration

In the wake of the demonstration, on the same day that the European Council approved the Treaty of Lisbon reforming the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community, CGTP issued a public statement. The trade union highlighted that the demonstration expressed ‘the protest of Portuguese workers against the intensifying exploitation that they are subject to at the workplace, against the policies that have contributed to a fast degradation of their living conditions, and in favour of a Europe built on progress, social justice and peace’.

In this statement, CGTP also commented on the EU-level social partners’ joint analysis of labour market challenges and criticised the Portuguese government for trying to present it as an agreement concerning labour market flexicurity. CGTP stated that the social partners’ joint analysis was just a common commitment concerning a technical analysis of European labour market challenges, including some general recommendations, and notes concerning the flexicurity concept. In addition, CGTP emphasised that ‘at the meeting of the ETUC executive committee, a significant proportion of trade union confederations expressed reservations and or criticised openly such recommendations, CGTP being one of them, but nevertheless not the more radical one’. Furthermore, at the end of the statement, CGTP demanded a referendum on the EU Reform Treaty in Portugal.

Maria da Paz Campos Lima, Dinâmia