IPSS: union speaks of intransigence

Speaking to Lusa, on the sidelines of a demonstration in Porto, on the day that workers at Private Social Solidarity Institutions (IPSS) are on strike for a day, the union leader explained that the proposal presented by CNIS “keeps the majority of workers” earning the national minimum wage.

“We do not accept that we continue, repeatedly, year after year, to keep these workers, who are of utmost importance to the community”, limited to receiving a minimum wage, pointed out Ana Paula Rodrigues.

According to that union member, the CNIS “has been intransigent, yes, but not just now, it has been for years now”.

“It is intransigent because it always presents proposals based on the national minimum wage and workers are no longer willing to do that,” he warned.

Ana Paula Rodrigues said that at the beginning of the negotiations, the workers demanded a salary increase of 150 for each one: “In response, the CNIS offered an increase of 50 which ended up being swallowed up in the salary scale for the value of the minimum wage”.

“However, we reformulated the proposal and said that we were available for 80 euros and it was also rejected by the CNIS. We cannot accept that these workers continue on this minimum wage record,” he said.

Paula Santos, a worker at an IPSS, as well as the approximately 100 workers who are demonstrating this morning in Porto.

“I have been working in a school with children for 14 years. It is a rewarding job, but tiring, with a lot of responsibility, with long hours and at the end of the month I take home the minimum wage, it is not fair”, he told Lusa.

The working hours are another issue that has led IPSS workers to take to the streets, which is why CESP is demanding a 35-hour working week for all workers, and the “right to reconcile working hours with family life”.

“We also have the proposal to regulate working hours, particularly with regard to additional rest, which is always divided into half-days, which means that institutions create schedules that allow workers to be at the service of the institutions almost seven days a week,” he highlighted.

This is a “sensitive point” for another of the workers present at the demonstration: “It is difficult to keep up with our children when we work every day. We end up keeping up with other people’s children and parents and almost abandoning our own”, lamented Filipa Quintas, who has worked at an IPSS for eight years.

The IPSS workers, around 200 thousand, also want to be given a supplement for work on Sundays and holidays, “currently paid as a weekday”.