Portugal: Real unemployment already at 10.9%

According to today's Diário de Noticias, the rate of unemployment in the Portuguese economy is already running at 10.9%, counting those who are currently "inactive but available" and those who are under-employed.

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Real unemployment in Portugal already at 10.9%

According to today's Diário de Noticias, the rate of unemployment in the Portuguese economy is already running at 10.9%, counting those who are currently "inactive but available" and those who are under-employed.

This high unemployment rate is a logical consequence of capitalism, no mater how much people may not like to admit the fact. Capitalism need unemployment and indeed manufactures it. A fully "efficient" capitalist system, as far as generating money is concerned, is a system where you will not find full employment.

It is instead a system where workers are constantly blackmailed with the threat of losing their jobs and it is no surprise that the principal features of today's labour market are unemployment and precarious employment. Capitalist profits thus continue to grow while people's lives are blighted by one crisis after another. These crises are of course "manna from heaven" for the capitalists. They have workers who are willing to do anything, who sell their labour for a song, for periods of six months (or even one month!) at a time, by means of a system where the bosses have no obligations and can fire at will, without it even being technically considered firing (as is the case with the increasingly frequent "green receipts").

In the meantime, social democrats (including the so-called "communist parties and their like) propose only the mirage of "full employment", as if such a thing were possible in this system.

Wage-slavery must end. We must be allowed to live, not "for" work, but "from" non-alienating work, work which is socially useful and which is determined by social and collective needs and not by the headlong rush for profits destined for the pockets of the lucky few.

Luta Social
22-02-06

Translation by Anarkismo.net

Note:
The "green receipt" system in Portugal is one where the worker is equated to a service provider, an independent worker who provides a service and the entreprise buys the service. It is the worst form of casual labour. If the boss no longer wants your "services", there is no way of complaining, and he needs no justification to stop "buying" your service.