December 11 saw a massive general strike in Portugal. This was not just a workplace dispute but a political strike, directed against the government’s planned labor reform.

Trade unions widely see this as a devaluation of labor and a profound attack on labor rights — in short, a class offensive. The massive participation in the strike shows that workers felt this way too.

Austerity Years

The bill, often referred to as the labor reform package, was proposed by the current right-wing government, which unites the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the CDS–People’s Party (CDS-PP). It introduces over one hundred regressive amendments to labor law, clearly aimed at shifting the balance of power in favor of employers.

These measures were neither presented nor debated during this spring’s general electoral campaign. They represent a deliberate rollback of labor rights, reviving and deepening the offensive launched during the Portuguese sovereign debt crisis (2010–14), also overseen by a PSD-CDS government.

Since 2010, there have been frequent revisions to the labor law. Indeed, we can divide the last decade and a half into two major periods. First were the austerity years, with cuts in public spending, tax hikes, and the privatization of strategic sectors. This moment also included the memorandum of understanding with the troika, made up of the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund. All this contributed to the consolidation of a neoliberal economic and labor regime. Then came the post-troika period, initially characterized by Socialist-led governments with left-wing support, in the so-called “contraption” (geringonça) arrangement. It sought to restore wages and pensions cut during austerity and to address labor precarity.

During the austerity phase, labor legislation worsened significantly. Measures incorporated into the labor law sought to reduce labor costs, particularly by making it easier to dismiss workers and also cheaper, through changing the system of compensation for contract terminations. At the same time, efforts were made to weaken collective bargaining by facilitating the expiration of agreements and to make working time more flexible through changes to overtime and holidays.

Yet this austerity era did not last unchanged. Rather, for almost a decade, with a government initially supported by a left-wing parliamentary majority (2015–2022) and later by the Socialist Party alone (2022–24), the austerity-era labor law was partially revised, particularly in areas such as wages, parental rights, and social protection. These revisions were, however, restrained, partly restoring some of the rights removed during the 2010–15 period but without structurally changing the architecture of the austerity-era neoliberal labor reform. During the pandemic, legislative changes focused primarily on regulating remote work and strengthening rights related to combining work and family life. These measures formed part of the initial steps of the so-called Decent Work Agenda, promoted during the Socialist Party’s majority government, which also sought to combat bogus self-employment and to advance the regulation of work on digital platforms.

Renewed Offensive

However, in March 2024, the PSD-CDS duo returned to government following the general election. This coalition then launched an attack aimed at resuming the austerity-era offensive while also seeking to reverse some of the gains achieved in the meantime. In the current labor reform package, solutions previously challenged and blocked by social and trade union mobilization, notably during the general strikes of 2010, 2011, and 2013, have reappeared. These include the expansion of discretionary forms of dismissal, the reduction of requirements for material justification, and the weakening of guarantees associated with collective bargaining, trade union rights, and the right to strike. In short, while the troika’s intervention focused primarily on the material cost of dismissals — changes that were largely never reversed — the current proposals seek to alter the basic architecture of employment protection guarantees to benefit employers.

While the Troika’s measures weakened collective bargaining by making it easier for agreements to expire, the current proposal erodes union rights further. Moreover, the proposal to broaden unions’ minimum service obligations during strikes is a direct attack on workers’ most powerful instrument of struggle. By extending these obligations from established essential services (schools, hospitals, transport) to additional sectors (schools and nurseries, care homes and social-care institutions, food-supply services, and private security) the labor reform package effectively hollows out the right to strike. It reduces it to a formal right without material force.

The troika established a so-called cheap flexibility framework, which the current proposal takes further. It also extends the duration of fixed-term and open-ended contracts with uncertain conditions and multiplies “atypical” forms of employment (such as intermittent and temporary work), making it increasingly difficult to secure a stable employment relationship. These measures seek to ensure a more efficient management of labor from the employer’s perspective and to use the lack of permanent status to discipline workers.

The main novelty in comparison with the troika period lies in the attack on the limited reforms implemented between 2015 and 2024, particularly with regard to digital platform work. The government proposal is likely to affect a much larger number of platform workers by making it more difficult for them to be recognized as employees. Rather than strengthening the presumption that this is indeed an employment relationship, it raises the threshold for such recognition. This would allow many couriers, drivers, and other gig-economy workers to continue to be classified as self-employed.

There is, however, a significant difference between the two moments. The reform imposed by the troika took place in a context of acute economic crisis, associated with the European sovereign debt crisis. The current reform is presented at a time when the Portuguese economy shows signs of growth, stability, and improvement per several macroeconomic indicators. This raises the question: what justifies such a deep attack on labor rights in this context? Beyond the ideological orientation of the current government, which has consistently advocated a shift in the balance of power from labor toward capital, it is also necessary to consider the framework associated with the European postpandemic recovery plan, NextGenerationEU. Such spending is largely implemented through the Recovery and Resilience Facility, which finances EU member states following the approval of their respective recovery and resilience plans. Access to these funds is subject to conditionalities, including structural reforms aimed at so-called economic modernization, the promotion of competitiveness, the green transition, and digitalization.

With the current labor reform package, the logic of state modernization, based on the digitalization of economic activity, underpins a significant part of the proposed measures. These are based on the idea that digitalization constitutes a new economic model, the emergence of a new labor market characterized by new productive processes, new forms of business organization, and new products and services. It is assumed that the current labor law is not friendly to these transformations, thereby justifying its rewriting in a manner more favorable to business interests.

General Strike

The December 11 general strike was the first in twelve years. Since 1974, Portugal has experienced eleven such actions (including the current one). The 2025 strike is one of only three that were jointly called by the two main interunion confederations: the General Confederations of the Portuguese Unions (CGTP), traditionally linked to the Communist Party, and the General Union of Workers (UGT), historically linked to the Socialist Party.

In the past, Portugal has seen very high levels of disruption during general strikes, with widespread work stoppages and a significant paralysis of economic and social activity. Although union membership has followed a long-term downward trend since the mid-1970s, particularly in the private sector, the capacity of general strikes to mobilize workers has not been fundamentally compromised.

According to publicly available data, Portugal’s active workforce is estimated at between 5.3 and 5.4 million people. Moreover, although the majority of workers are formally employed within the regulated labor market, a share of economic activity remains informal, particularly in sectors such as hospitality and construction, where casual and undeclared work is more prevalent in contrast to formal employment. According to trade unions, the December 11 general strike mobilized around three million workers, in a country of under eleven million people. It is not, however, possible to precisely determine the relative weight of public and private sector involvement. Still, an analysis of daily union reports points to strong participation in the private sector, including the closures of supermarkets, shops, industrial units, and other workplaces. According to both the CGTP and the UGT, this was one of the largest strikes in Portugal’s recent history. Union data indicate participation rates of around 90 percent in many hospitals, while in urban and interregional transport the impact was particularly strong, with the Lisbon Metro completely shut down.

In the private sector, participation was more uneven but still significant, especially among unionized workers and those covered by collective agreements. Lower levels of participation were particularly evident in highly precarious sectors and in subcontracting chains. In banking and insurance, according to the UGT, participation was substantial, as it was in energy, waste, and water services, which operated exclusively under minimum service regimes. The sectors with the lowest participation rates were cleaning, private security, hospitality and food services, and outsourced services, where fear of retaliation remains widespread.

In the public sector, the strike was more visible and more uniform. Unions estimate participation at around 60 percent overall, with particularly strong involvement among administrative and operational staff. In education, nonteaching staff joined the strike in large numbers, shuttering many public schools. In several regions, unions estimate participation of between 70 and 100 percent.

The government and employer organizations offered a totally different picture, claiming that participation ranged between 0 and 10 percent of the workforce. In its first statements, the government based its claims on data indicating that the number of ATM transactions had fallen by only 7 percent. These allegations were also supported by the Portuguese Business Confederation (CIP), which supports the planned reform. It used various strategies to counteract and play down the strike, including illegal practices like subcontracting to temp agencies for the strike day. One illustrative example was multinational fashion firm Zara. Some 87 percent of workers at its store in Rossio joined the general strike. After its workers’ union publicly denounced the company’s attempt to replace workers on strike, Zara was forced to dismiss the subcontracted workers used to substitute the strikers.

The Struggle Ahead

The strike’s success is both surprising and hopeful. Given the political context in Portugal (with the Right and far right representing more than two-thirds of MPs) and difficulties for left-wing parties, the fact that trade unions were able to organize a strike with such massive participation opens a path for new struggles and gives the Left some strategic perspective for the moments ahead.

The last general strike organized by both union confederations, in 2013, had also been backed by a social movement organized around growing precarity. Lacking an organizational structure, it sought ways to organize outside of the trade unions. From this position of weakness, the decision was made to organize away from the point of production in a cross-sector alliance of precarious workers. The 2013 general strike happened amid powerful mobilizations, from the anti-precarity movement to the fight against austerity and the troika. Yet this movement has vanished over the last decade.

The economic specialization of the Portuguese economy in tourism and services has added to workers’ precarity. Portugal is today one of the OECD countries with the most precarious labor relations. This affects the capacity for struggle and union organization, as without collective agreements, workers are more vulnerable in the workplace and in their capacity to unionize.

Still, the success of the general strike tells us that labor issues remain central — and that they can mobilize a large share of Portuguese workers. In response, even André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega, had to change his party’s position on the labor reform package. Having previously promised to back the bill, Chega now denounces the government’s line in a clear effort to retain popularity among workers.

The fact that even unions that have lost members could organize such a large strike in such a difficult political context speaks not only to the government’s brutal attack on labor rights but also to the issues that still inspire many workers. If we are to rebuild a strong political left in Portugal, labor and strengthening the unions will be key.Email