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November 24, 2010

General Strike Staged in Portugal
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In Portugal, a general strike against budget cuts and tax hikes has
stopped trains and buses, grounded planes and halted services from
healthcare to banking. Labor unions organized the day of action,
Portugal’s first general strike since 1988, to protest a raft of
austerity measures including plans to cut wages for civil servants by 5
percent and freeze pensions. Graciete Cruz is a Portuguese trade
unionist.

Graciete Cruz: "The workers, the men and women, will certainly flight
against it because we cannot accept that kind of policy which is the
policy that has been followed ever since. Always, it has always been the
workers paying for a crisis form which they are not responsible for."



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