The Chamber of Olhão "broke unilaterally and without any prior communication with the agreement established with the union organizations" by deciding to impose a 40-hour week on its employees, accused the PCP Olhão.
The communists consider that, with this measure, the majority PS in the Chamber of Olhão "allies with the government in an attempt to impose unpaid work on hundreds of workers from the CMO, Ambiolhão and also the Municipal Firefighters."
More than 200 municipalities in the country, "including 13 of the 16 in the Algarve" opted to maintain the 35-hour weekly schedule, recalled the PCP. In other words, they took advantage of an exception to the rule imposed by the current government, which determined that civil servants had to work 40 hours a week, similarly to workers in the private sector.
For the rest, the maintenance of 35 hours a week was agreed by all municipalities, under the AMAL – Algarve Intermunicipal Community, in March 2014. At the time, it was agreed that the Chambers would form a common front to negotiate with the unions and adopt the 35-hour weekly regime.
The PCP/Olhão defended, even though, in practice, the transition from 35 to 40 hours of work, “will not have any effect on improving the services provided by the municipality and will represent, rather, thousands of hours of unpaid work, transferring for the workers' backs the costs of the wrong political choices of the successive governments of the PS, PSD and CDS but also of the Chamber of Olhão that has been managed by the PS».
«It is not unpaid work, exploitation and impoverishment, that the Olhão chamber needs. What the Municipality of Olhão needs is another financial policy, in the management of resources and priorities of the municipality, a policy of seriousness that was not seen in this blow against the workers», they add.
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