The Union of Workers in Road and Urban Transport of Portugal (STRUP/Fectrans) stated that the Board of Directors of Carris argued at a meeting with the General Directorate of Employment and Labor Relations that Carnival day should not be considered a working day. According to the union, this argument was made in an attempt to define minimum services for the strike. However, for legal purposes, Carnival is not an official holiday. The union noted that from February 24, when the strike notice was given, until March 10, there were 11 days.
Rather than debating the technicalities of counting days, the union decided to withdraw the strike notice for March 11 and instead issued a new 24-hour strike notice for March 18. The focus is on bringing workers together for a large-scale demonstration rather than engaging in discussions over the legality of the initial strike date. A general plenary session is scheduled for the same day, where workers will determine the next steps needed to push the Board of Directors and the Lisbon City Council toward meeting their demands.
Workers are seeking a real and significant increase in wages and meal allowances, a gradual reduction to a 35-hour workweek, and the establishment of a compensatory allowance for employees in fixed sectors. Additionally, the union is demanding that travel expenses for transit workers be paid without factoring in bonuses.
The strike action was confirmed following a plenary session held at Santo Amaro Station in Lisbon. The union presented a revised financial proposal based on worker decisions from the previous general plenary session. This proposal includes a 90-euro salary increase retroactive to January, an interim 30-euro increase effective from July, and an increase in the meal allowance to 12.50 euros.
STRUP criticized the Board of Directors for maintaining the “excellence award” instead of incorporating the amount into base salaries. Despite rejecting the union’s proposal outright, the company acknowledged that wages are increasingly aligning with the national minimum wage. The union highlighted that for employees to maintain the same wage gap relative to the minimum wage that existed in 2009, a salary increase of 196 euros would be necessary this year.
