The real unemployment rate in the Algarve “should be much higher” than the 19,7% announced yesterday by INE and be “five to seven percentage points above the official rate”, guaranteed the União dos Sindicatos do Algarve.
The USAL also emphasizes that the figure released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) for the last three months of 2012 has a year-on-year variation of 2,4 percent and is, “by itself, very high” and “well above average national".
The Union of Trade Unions also held the Government responsible for the unemployment rate that affects the region, which, according to data released yesterday by INE, was 2012% in the fourth quarter of 19,7.
In a statement, the union structure, affecting the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP-IN), stressed that “this brutal volume of unemployment, which today affects more than 60 thousand workers in the Algarve, many of them without the right to unemployment benefit and many also without means of subsistence, it is a direct consequence of the Government's action”.
USAL added that the Government has "prosecuted a policy of disaster, introducing recession in the economy, causing the closure of companies and the liquidation of thousands of jobs, imposing permanent sacrifices and brutal austerity", of which the "brutal" example is increase” arising from the State Budget for 2013.
Furthermore, the Government has also promoted “the elimination of social and labor rights” and is “trying to destroy the social functions of the State”.
"It is now increasingly clear that solutions to the serious problems of the country and the region imply an urgent change in policy and Government and that the longer this Government and this policy are maintained, the worse the problems will be", defended the Union of Unions of the Algarve.
Precisely to protest against this state of affairs, the USAL called, for Saturday, February 16, at 15:30 pm, three demonstrations that will take place in Faro, at the Liceu roundabout, in Portimão, in Alameda, and in Vila Real de Santo António, in Praça Marquês de Pombal.
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