Portuguese police announce 3-day strike for late July

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - The Portuguese Confederation of Security Forces have announced a three-day strike in July and a protest to coincide with a Papal visit in early August.

The organization that called the strike includes members of the national gendarmerie force, the national civil police force, maritime police, food safety and economic surveillance authority and prison guards.

They called the three-day strike from July 24 through 26, the week before Lisbon is set to host one of the Catholic faith’s largest annual events.

World Youth Day, which gathers an average of three million young people of the Catholic faith, is set to be held in Lisbon on Aug. 1-6.

On Aug. 2, Pope Francis plans to visit Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in his Lisbon residence. Security forces plan to hold a mass protest outside of the palace during the meeting.

“Even his holiness will know how Portugal’s security forces are being treated, and we hope he’ll say something to the president of the republic,” said committee secretary Cesar Nogueira at a press conference Monday.

Nogueira added that police and other security authorities will also be handing out pamphlets at airports, the port and train stations to share their complaints with the visitors.

The organization is going to have to “get creative” because not everyone has “the right to strike,” he said.

One of the security forces’ main complaints has to do with low salaries, some of which they say have hardly increased since 2009.

“No one can live on salaries from 10 years ago. The inflation is what it is … there’s the price of homes, and people have expenses, but they have to do their jobs and focus on their service,” he added.