The Socialist Party sinks the law against precarious employment

The tragicomic parliamentary comedy of the Stalinist PC
The labor movement paralyzed by opportunism

On November 26, the Portuguese parliament rejected a bill by the Stalinist PCP aimed at limiting precarious work. The social-democratic Socialist Party – in fact the governing party, mediating between the various parliamentary bands – had approved it in vague terms, before joining the right-wingers in sinking it.

The law would have limited the cases allowed for fixed-term contracts, established a maximum number of times they could be renewed and cancelled those of very short duration. It was also planned to repeal the increase of the probationary period to 180 days in the case of first-time job seekers and the long-term unemployed.

The CPP limited itself to reformist parliamentary oratory, not wanting to launch the general proletarian offensive against the increase of exploitation, precarity and misery that the pandemic has unleashed on the working class. This is despite the fact that it is fully within the powers of the PCP, which maintains a stifling grip on the direction of the struggles in Portugal, directing them wherever possible towards national and democratic rather than class objectives, demoralizing the workers and completely failing to protect their livelihoods, a mission it pays lip service to.

The Communist parliamentary leader stressed before the vote that “workers need a solution to their problems; companies should not lay off and hire at will”. But for this desperate “need” all the PCP can offer are parliamentary speeches!

Portugal and its labor movement are in a unique position because of how the apparatus of government was set up after the false revolution of 1974. Stalinism has maintained a strong influence in the labor movement, in its historical pseudo-radical role within the institutions, in the service of the bourgeoisie, as an alternative to the official corporatism of the ruling Socialist Party. While the union maneuvered by the PS, the UGT, is openly regime, in the role of wholesale seller of labor in secret negotiations, the CGTP, overwhelmingly controlled by the PCP, presents itself as an “independent class organ” for the defense of the working class, although the political directives of the PCP make it incapable and unwilling to defend anything in the face of the offensive of the bosses. Thus we have two regime union confederations, giving the workers the illusion that one of them is resisting the statist policy of the other.

In this reluctance and inability to defend the workers the disastrous policy of the CGTP has dispersed the Portuguese movement: in 1978 60.8% of workers were unionized; today only a paltry 15%. To the workers, the CGTP appears useless, as it demonstrated in the port workers’ strike of 2019.

The struggle would like to be replaced by parliamentary campaigns, designed to fail and symptomatic of opportunism. By relying on the PCP to defend their interests in parliament, workers have given up the direct struggle against capitalist exploitation, leaving the defense of their conditions to parliament, the very organ of bourgeois political domination! The role of the PCP within the Portuguese State is clear: to disarm the workers.

While the PCP headlines in its newspapers that “the Socialist Party has failed once again with the workers” at the same time it allies itself with the PS, recognized traitor of the proletariat, in parliamentary disputes “against the right”!

Thus the Portuguese workers are left without means of struggle, they are left demoralized and disarmed to the growing exploitation. This is what the parliamentary “workers’ parties” are, reformist and opportunist.

Unfortunately, the PCP’s campaign still deceives the majority of workers, with great waste of proletarian energies.

In the Stalinist parliamentary theater the PCP has sworn not to give up the struggle, “the struggle continues”, of course in parliament, repeating the same mistakes that led to all this disaster! Yes, it is the fault of the PS, but, come on, you can’t hate them too much, we need them to beat fascism! That’s why we are allying ourselves with them”.

What is lacking today is a revolutionary party – our party – that denounces parliament as a counter-revolutionary instrument and proceeds with principled and revolutionary trade union work, the claims of the class, never with national and democratic ones.