The general strike on June 3 was an important day of mobilization for workers against the “labor package,” proposed by the Democratic Alliance (AD) government, which represents the deepest attacks on workers since the days of the dictatorship. It is not easy to determine the number of strikers, but there are estimates of three million. Nevertheless, the strike could have been even stronger. Where do we go from here?

[Originally published on Marxist.com]

Education, health, and transportation were critical sectors heavily affected by the strike. In several factories, the strike forced a halt of production. Even at the Lisbon Book Fair, several pavilions remained closed. Despite pressure and coercion from the bosses, precarious employment affecting a million workers, and very low unionisation rates in the private sector, the country was clearly operating at half-capacity.

From this perspective, the workers of the country certainly answered the call for a general strike by the CGTP trade union confederation. However, compared to the last general strike in December 2025, popular participation was lower, and the demonstrations called in Lisbon, Porto, and elsewhere less militant.

Police violence and lies

Last year, thousands of workers flocked to these cities—the vast majority being young laborers—and remained for hours in front of parliament without any leadership, as the CGTP leaders had long deserted the scene. This time, as soon as the unions’ sound truck finished playing the anthem of the republican bourgeoisie, the few hundred who remained quickly moved into a relaxed gathering that ended up being broken up by gratuitous police violence.

In statements to the press, the police chief later explained that the demonstration had become “illegal” from 6pm onwards: although it’s not clear who gave the police the right to simply declare a demonstration “illegal”! On the pretext of alleged protester violence, the heavily armed police swept away dozens of peaceful demonstrators, arresting several of them.

But the accusation of violence carried out by the protesters falls apart on any examination. No police officer was injured, hospitalized, or even needed a sticking plaster.

As always, union leaders and left-wing party leaders remained silent on the subject of these abject lies about protester “violence” and “vandalism.”

For the government and the right, ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon and genocide in Gaza are not violence. No, but setting fire to a trash can, that is violence! Their hypocrisy is far more nauseating than the stink of burning trash.

Limitations of the labor leaders

Fearing the reaction of the workers, the government had previously dragged its feet in sham negotiations with the union for almost a year. The fact that now, on the very day of the general strike, the government scheduled a parliamentary vote on the labor package for June 18, suggests that it senses the weakness of the movement.

Shouldn’t this be a wake up call for the union leaders? We are facing a package of labor laws that would be highly damaging to workers. And it would also damage the unions themselves as well as their respective apparatuses, which will be prohibited from freely disseminating propaganda in companies where there are no unionized workers. Their capacity for collective bargaining will be curtailed, and future strikes will be undermined by the expansion of “minimum services.”

What have the union leaders done in response, however? The UGT—the other main trade union confederation alongside the CGTP—which in December even suggested the possibility of a two-day general strike, did not join the one on June 3.

Since then, the government has not yielded an inch on the essential points of its plans. The negotiations ended in failure, and the UGT leaders were content to do nothing more. Meanwhile, the CGTP—excluded from the negotiations—spent months sporadically calling for little more than symbolic demonstrations, and delivered a petition to parliament, as if petitions could move the bosses and their government!

In the face of what the unions themselves describe as “the biggest attack on workers’ rights,” their leaders have fallen far short of what is needed.

From December to June

Why was the feeling of anger that existed in December allowed to dissipate? How was it felt that waiting another six months to call a new general strike was an effective strategy? This gave the government, the bosses, and their media time to promote the idea that there is no alternative to the labour package.

This is a weak government, without a majority in parliament, that successive polls have given a mere 25% of public support, which has just been humiliated in the presidential elections, and which totally discredited itself through its incompetence in helping the victims of extreme winter storms. And yet, this weak government was given a six month reprieve by the trade union leaders since the last general strike.

This same method has led to setback after setback, defeat after defeat over decades. In the 1970s, right after the revolution of April 25, three quarters of Portuguese workers were unionized. Today, less than one in six are in unions. That is one of the lowest unionization rates in Europe.

Workers will only engage in struggle if they feel they can win, that the struggle is serious and for worthwhile objectives. For any worker, going on strike means losing at least a day’s wage. For many in the private sector, especially for more than a million workers with fixed-term contracts, going on strike can mean dismissal or non-renewal of the contract.

Many workers, although they oppose the labor package, know that isolated strike days, called every six months, will not defeat the bosses.

When bourgeois commentators accuse union leaders and left-wing reformists of living in the past, they are not entirely wrong. Many of them still imagine themselves to be in a world where employers offered two percent, unions demanded seven percent, and, under threat of strike, employers compromised and gave a 4% pay increase.

This arrangement will not return. What we need are not “realistic” and “dialogue-oriented” unions. Our class enemies are not interested in negotiations and dialogue, and when they are, it is only to allow themselves a pause in order to redouble their attacks. What we need are uncompromising, class-struggle unions that are willing to go on the offensive. And regardless of what happens with the labor package, it will still be possible to go on the offensive!

Chega maneuvers on the labor package

The impasse of the union struggle and absence of a left-wing political point of expression has, unfortunately, turned the leader of the right-populist Chega party, André Ventura, into the arbiter who will hold the balance of power during the June 18 vote on the labor package. Outside of the minority coalition government, Chega is the largest party in parliament, and so its decision to support, oppose, or abstain in the vote will be decisive.

Ventura is a bourgeois demagogue, who initially presented himself as a Javier Milei-type figure, backing the labor package as necessary for Portugal’s economy. But then he felt the hot breath of class struggle on his neck in December, and changed his tune from saying “the trade unions are bloodsuckers” to “the workers have good reasons to protest.”

This was because he realized the working-class people who voted for Chega, as a way to protest against the establishment, were fiercely opposed to the government proposal. His volte-face is entirely cynical.

The fact that Ventura has said he wouldn’t approve the labor package as presented doesn’t even mean it will fall. Chega’s abstention is enough for the package to pass in parliament. Ultimately, Ventura isn’t even very concerned about consistency: in the past, he voted three different ways on the same proposal in a single day! Suffice it to say, André Ventura will always try to do what’s best for André Ventura.

The fact that he has been forced to squirm and maneuver actually proves the immense opposition to the labor package in society, and the potential reserves of class resistance that are being squandered!

According to the latest opinion polls, the majority of Chega’s electorate (over sixty percent) is still against the labor package. This puts pressure on Ventura. He would surely love to extract some symbolic concessions from the government, like dropping the proposals about reducing maternity leave or the breastfeeding period. After all, he likes to pose as the great defender of family values.

This would be in exchange for a “patriotic abstention,” which he will justify to his base by saying, at the end of the day, the “national interest” is always better defended with a bad reform rather than no reform at all.

If Prime Minister Luís Montenegro fails to throw Ventura a bone, he might vote against the labor package. This would necessitate a new negotiation process. And we already know what that would mean: a simple pause in the war being waged against us and more sham negotiations with the union leaders.

It goes without saying that no expectations can be placed on the actions of a bourgeois politician, let alone an open reactionary like Ventura! But we can also have no illusions about the union and political leadership of our class, which has failed to mount a serious opposition for the last 50 years.

We address the activists and union delegates, to those who were on the pickets, in the rallies, in the marches, and in the strikes, to the most conscious and militant workers of our class.

The Revolutionary Communist Collective says that our future, the future of our children, demands that our unions be rebuilt as organizations of struggle and victory, not of compromise and defeat. And, beyond the strictly trade-union struggle, it is imperative to build a revolutionary alternative to capitalism, both in Portugal and in all countries. In the immortal words of the Communist Manifesto:

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite!