Total strike in Metro Transport South with 100% membership

A strike of the workers of Metro Transporto do Sul registered a 100% membership this morning, according to the National Union of Maquinists of the Portuguese Railways (SMAQ), which ensures that only minimum services have been performed.

“ You're being what you'd expect. The strike is 100%, the workers are joining in mass. All the circulation is stopped, only the minimum services on line 3 (Cacillas-University) between 07:00 and 09:00”, Lusa the union president, António Barata Domingues, told Lusa.

The workers of Metro Transporto do Sul are in “total strike” today and Wednesday, claiming a salary update that “takes into account the loss of purchasing power” and better working conditions, according to the union of drivers.

The shutdown will have different modalities between today and October 27.

For today and Wednesday a “total strike” is planned, and from Thursday until October 27th, the halt will be to the “two last hours of the working periods started in these days”, according to the union.

Under the minimum services decreed by day 27, there will be circulation on line 3 (Cacillas/University) between 07:00 and 09:00 and between 17:00 and 19:00.

Customers who usually use line 2 (Corroios/Pragal) should tranship at the “Bento Gonçalves” stop in order to continue their journey through lines 1 and 3.

In a note sent to the agency Lusa, the board of directors of the company, which serves the municipalities of Almada and Seixal, in the district of Setúbal, considered the strike “unproportional in a permanent opening framework and in a context of full availability for dialogue and implementation of effective improvements that have been guaranteed in the working conditions of the MTS workers, in particular the Driving Operators”.

The SMAQ said that the strike was called after the lack of concrete results in the negotiations of a new Business Agreement, and the decision was taken by the workers gathered in plenary “after about two and a half years of negotiations without it having been possible to reach an understanding that meets their demands”.

According to the trade union structure, “there is a need to improve working conditions, to ensure a wage update that takes account of the loss of purchasing power and to ensure that matters relating to the organization of work are the subject of collective bargaining rather than unilateral decisions of the company”.

The president of the SMAQ told Lusa that workers ask for concrete proposals for negotiation and “not the application of unnegotiated rules” and call on the government to mediate between the two parties.

The Metro Sul do Tejo, a public transport system provided by the so-called light surface meter in the municipalities of Almada and Seixal, in the district of Setúbal, is operated by Metro Transportes do Sul (MTS).