The Labor Association CGTP-IN/Açores presented the Azorean workers’ demands for 2025, which include measures such as a 10% increase in the National Minimum Wage and a reduction in working hours to 35 hours a week.
According to leader Vítor Silva, the document presented yesterday at a press conference in Ponta Delgada, on the island of São Miguel, is “a framework for the central demands” of the Azorean workers.
As the main demands for 2025, the CGTP-IN/Açores presents an increase in the Regional Increase to the National Minimum Wage from 5% to 10% “considering the difference in the cost of living between the Azores and the mainland.”
“This increase from 5% to 10% would be a way of fighting poverty and getting the Azores out of the poverty trap of all the tables that are published year after year,” said Vítor Silva.
He also advocated a 15% wage increase to a minimum of 150 euros “for all workers,” effective January 1, 2025, and an increase in supplementary pay to 100 euros.
“Reducing the maximum normal working week to 35 hours, without increasing the daily working day and without reducing pay, for all workers” is another proposal that the CGTP-IN/Açores includes in its list of demands for next year.
The union also suggests setting maximum prices for essential public goods and services (water, electricity, gas, fuel, and transport) to relieve families and companies, giving “absolute priority” to creating and maintaining jobs and the “immediate need” to create and implement a Plan to Combat Precarious Work in the region that takes into account the principle “that each permanent job must correspond to a permanent job.”
According to the CGTP-IN/Açores spokesperson, the labor and social situation in the region “is not as many people paint it”, claiming that “people feel the problems on their skin”.
The economic, social and political context in which the struggle to achieve the workers’ demands will take place in 2025 “will be particularly demanding”, said the trade unionist.
For the CGTP-IN/Açores, the general wage increase is “the central issue” and “absolutely crucial to guaranteeing the right to meet the day-to-day needs of workers and their families and to provide them with a dignified life.”
The demands also include “guaranteeing the quality and strengthening of the social functions of the state and public services, as a fundamental condition for responding to the constitutionally enshrined rights of workers and the population, for developing the region and promoting social and territorial cohesion.”
The demands released yesterday will be delivered to various entities and political parties in the Autonomous Region of the Azores.

In Diário dos Açores, Osvaldo Cabral, director

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.