PORTUGAL GENERAL STRIKE

General Strike in Portugal Over Austerity Measures
by Axel Bugge
Reuters - 24 November 2010

Portugal's biggest Unions went on their first joint general strike since 1988 today, hoping to weaken the Socialist government's resolve on implementing austerity measures meant
to tackle a debt crisis.

The country's two biggest Unions stopped trains and buses, grounded planes and halted services from healthcare to banking in protest against wage cuts and rising unemployment in western Europe's poorest country. Prime Minister Jose Socrates, whose government is struggling to quash speculation that Portugal will be the next in Europe to need a bailout after Ireland and Greece, has pledged to stay the course on wage cuts and tax hikes to cut the budget deficit.

As the strike kicked off, Portugal's largest exporter, Volkswagen's (VOWG.DE) Autoeuropa plant, halted production altogether. The plant produces up to 500 cars on an average day."The production line is completely shut, so we expect that no cars will be produced today," said Autoeuropa Union coordinator Calros Chora, adding that only a small part of the plant dealing with repairs would be open."There is a picket line outside, but they are letting people in and out," he said. Lisbon has been plastered with banners for weeks urging workers to join the strike.

The CGTP Union said all ports were now shut, and check-in counters at Lisbon's main airport was empty. National airline TAP has cancelled most flights. However no mass protests were expected on Wednesday.Roads in and around the capital Lisbon were choked with heavy traffic as many people chose to commute by car. Cafes and shops were open and vans delivered goods as usual. The Unions hope to tap into the growing dissatisfaction with the minority Socialist government's austerity measures, which also include across the board spending cuts in public services.

"It's the Workers who are paying for the crisis, not the Bankers nor the Shareholders of big companies," said Leandro Martins, a 65-year old Pensioner."This is a strike against rightist policies, to demand new policies serving the Portuguese people."Portugal has suffered from years of low growth - unlike other weak Euro economies such as Ireland and Spain that went from boom to bust - and waning competitiveness which economists say undermines its ability to ride out the debt crisis."Maybe the strike will not provoke radical changes in the austerity course the government has chosen, but it does represent an additional element of uncertainty in the already unstable setting in the country," said Elisio Estanque, a sociology researcher at the University of Coimbra.

The country's risk premium - or spreads on its bonds over safer German Bunds - hit a euro lifetime high on Nov. 11 and was close to that level on Wednesday, at 460 basis points. Even though the economy is growing this year, economists fear it will slide back into recession in 2011, as higher taxes and civil servant wage cuts of five percent bite into consumption. Unemployment, already at its highest since the 1980s at 10.9 percent, could rise further.

JOB CREATION MACHINE

SOCIAL SECURITY 55 -- LOWER the AGE -- CREATE MILLIONS of JOBS

One of the most powerful forms of stimulus we could apply to our economy right now would be to lower the current Social Security retirement age from the current 65-67, to age 55.

And increase the benefits back to where they were in inflation-adjusted 1960s dollars by raising them between 10 to 20 percent (so people could actually live on Social Security).

The right-wing reaction to this, of course, will be to say that with fewer people working and more people drawing benefits, it would bankrupt Social Security and destroy the economy. But history shows the exact reverse.

Instead, it would eliminate the problem of Unemployment in the United States. All those Boomers retiring would make room in the labor market for all the recent high-school and college graduates (YOUTH) now finding it so hard to find a job.

Thom Hartmann goes on to discuss about how lowering the retirement age would open up thousands of jobs nationwide, and how wages for working class Americans have been devastated since the days of Ronald Reagan and our old pal Alan Greenspan started gutting Unions and trying to lower our standard of living.

In September of 2007, in an interview on C-SPAN for Book TV, Greenspan said: “We pay the highest skilled labor wages in the world. If we would open up our borders to skilled labor far more than we do, we would attract a very substantial quantity of skilled labor which would suppress the wage levels of the skilled, because the skilled are essentially being subsidized by the government, meaning our competition is being kept outside the country.”

It’s shocking that ideologues like Greenspan, Reagan, and Clinton believe this, but they do. And the only way to reverse the past 29 years of Reaganomics and Clintonomics is to tighten up the labor market again.

While a great start would be to pull out of our insane trade treaties and begin again protecting American manufacturers, that will take a decade for the impact to be truly felt even if we were to go back to our 1980 TARIFF levels today.

Thom finishes by stating that his plan would ultimately "take us to nearly ZERO
UNEMPLOYMENT and dramatically stimulate the economy."

Written by Thom Hartmann www.
ThomHartmann.com