LISBON—This Wednesday, on June 3, Portuguese workers will once again walk off the job in a massive general strike in an attempt to deliver a second blow to a right-wing government that refuses to implement workers’ demands. The General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP-IN) called a nationwide general strike to defeat the government’s labor package—the same one that workers buried with their December 2025 general strike.
December’s general strike was Portugal’s first since 2013. Tens of thousands of workers shut down ports, grounded flights, closed schools, and halted public transport. The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) hailed the mobilization as “an enormous statement of the workers’ strength and unity.”
The CGTP-IN then underscored that the attack on workers’ living standards was happening not during an economic crisis but amidst growth and steep rises in corporate profits. The strike proved that working-class unity and collective action can deliver the goods. Now, the government has brought the same anti-worker package back to the Assembly of the Republic, and Portuguese workers are preparing to say no again.
The CGTP-IN called the proposal “an outright assault on workers’ rights.” The package runs 85 pages with over one hundred amendments, worsening job insecurity, deregulating working hours, encouraging unpaid work, and attempting to impose dismissal without just cause.
PCP General Secretary Paulo Raimundo noted in parliament that the labor minister was absent because “the labor package proposal is indefensible.” He said the package not only fails to solve any problem but makes every single one worse.
“Not only does the labor package fail to change anything that is already wrong with the current labor law,” Raimundo said, “but every change it introduces serves only to make conditions for workers even worse.”
What is in this package?
The government wants to expand fixed-term contracts from two to three years and promote outsourcing to destroy permanent jobs. Even when a court declares a temporary contract illegal, the worker would become permanent at the agency, not where they actually work.
The government is also going after workers misclassified as self-employed, raising the threshold for an employment contract presumption from 50% to 80%. On dismissals, even when a court finds no just cause, the bosses can prevent reinstatement by claiming it “affects the company’s operation.” The PCP called this: “‘I want, I can, and I command’ made into law.”
The attack on working hours is equally severe. For example, the individual hour bank returns, allowing bosses to impose up to 150 hours of unpaid overtime per year.
The PCP described it this way: “You know when you start, you don’t know when you finish.”
The government also wants to force workers with children under 12 to work nights and weekends, reduce breastfeeding leave, and limit flexible hours.
“Less time with children, more pressure on mothers and fathers,” the PCP said.
Collective bargaining is a direct target
The proposal also facilitates the expiration of collective agreements and lets corporations choose which contract applies. The right to strike and trade union freedoms are also under assault, with mandatory minimum services and restrictions on union access to workplaces.
“Less organization—more exploitation,” the PCP warned.
“This is a labor package tailored to the interests of large companies,” the CGTP-IN stated.
Raimundo made clear why this fight is happening now: “The government, employers, Chega, and the Liberal Initiative thought they could increase precariousness, further deregulate working hours, oppress the lives of working people, dismiss without just cause, and that everyone would simply accept this as normal,” he said. “However, what workers have done… was to say no, no and no to this labor package.”
Chega is a far-right anti-immigrant populist party that broke away from Portugal’s biggest conservative force, the governing Social Democratic Party. Chega is the second largest political party in parliament and is led by figures with long records of opposing the organized workers movement. Liberal Initiative, another right-wing party, has a platform centered on labor market deregulation. Though neither are members of the government, both support the labor package.
PCP’s Raimundo says that with so much political support from the right, “the government thought it had a red carpet rolled out for it. It was wrong. That’s how it was then, and that’s how it will be on June 3.”
Raimundo called on all workers to participate in the general strike to open “the path of wages, the path of rights, the path of stability, the path of time to live.”
‘One more push and the package will fail’
Mobilization is growing across every sector, according to Avante, the daily newspaper of the PCP. Workers at Frismag, Versigent, Teijin, Bimbo, OGMA, Super Bock, and many other companies have declared support.
The transport federation FECTRANS issued strike notices covering rail, metro, ports, and postal services. The flight crew union SNPVAC approved participation. Public sector unions are also striking, with STAL stressing that “the offensive by the right-wing coalition…is against all workers.”
The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) expressed full solidarity, stating that “these policies reflect the constant strategy of big capital in all countries.”
“We express our full and unconditional solidarity with the general strike and stand firmly beside CGTP-IN, the workers of Portugal and their just demands,” the federation said.
The CGTP-IN stated that June 3 is “yet another opportunity for all those who work…to demonstrate their rejection of the degradation of their living conditions.”
“We are all needed to defeat the labor package,” highlighted the Coordinator of Workers’ Commissions of the Lisbon Region.
“What will determine the outcome of this confrontation is the strength, determination, unity, and struggle of the workers,” said Raimundo. One more push, the PCP says, and the package will fall for good.
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