“The Government is not reforming the Labour Code, it is testing the country. It is testing how many hours can be extended, how many rights can be revoked, how many collective agreements can expire, how many strikes can be emptied by minimum service decrees,” the union argued in a statement sent to its members.

The SNPVAC (National Union of Civil Aviation Flight Personnel) has therefore requested the president of the General Assembly to schedule an emergency assembly, on a date yet to be announced, considering that “all these changes have enormous repercussions on the aviation sector”.

The union rejected the statements of the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, who accused the CGTP and UGT trade union confederations and the unions of “political opportunism” for having called a joint general strike.

“True opportunism is using political power to test the patience and dignity of an entire country, while calling the dismantling of labour guarantees a ‘reform’,” he stressed.

For the SNPVAC, Luís Montenegro's words reveal “a profoundly unfair and disrespectful view of the role of the trade union movement” and constitute a discourse “that attempts to transform unions into enemies of the economy”.

“There is no modernity when legislation is passed against those who work. And there is no social dialogue when the Government responds to protests with accusations of opportunism,” the union emphasised, considering that the Government's draft labour reform “is an unprecedented civilisational setback that is not even aligned with the economies that this Government takes as a reference.”

The CGTP and UGT announced a general strike for December 11 against the Government's proposal, in what will be the first joint strike since June 2013, when Portugal was under the intervention of the 'troika'.