Portugal
(January 2017) There was strong support for a health workers' strike on 20 January with unions calling for action on pay, career development and the application of the 35-hour week for all public service workers. On 3 February non-teaching staff in schools and kindergartens plan a 24-hour strike with demands to tackle precarious employment, to increase recruitment and create a proper career structure.
Non-teaching staff in the education sector, members of the public service unions in the CGTP confederation, will be taking strike action on 29 November. Their main demands include an end to the recruitment ratio that restricts the number of new recruits when workers leave the service, an overall increase in staffing, measures to reduce precarious employment and improvements to pay and career progression.
Workers employed in the Agency for International Co-operation for Development (AECID) took strike action on 8 September in protest over pay and conditions. Around 40% of staff have either left or are thinking of leaving the service because of deteriorating conditions pay frozen since 2009 and eroded by inflation and currency fluctuations. This has left some workers as much as 60% worse off in real terms. Unlike workers in other overseas departments AECID employees don't get any protection against local changes in the cost of living and this is the key demand of the strike.
