“Improving the labour and salary conditions of the Lajes Air Base workers was the goal that has always guided the negotiations that have been developed and which have led to the agreement which is now being ratified,” stated André Bradford on Friday at the end of the meeting of the General Policy Commission of the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, where he was heard on the petition on the “Amendment of the Labour Agreement of the Portuguese Workers at the Lajes Air Base.”
For the Regional Secretary of the Presidency, this petition “meets the concerns of the Government of the Azores which has sought to find the best possible solutions for the workers at the Lajes Air Base with regard to salary raises,” adding that the agreement “despite not being the ideal one, safeguards the interests of the workers, who still have a chance of benefiting from a different salary raise system, comparing to the common Azorean worker, which “has always been our concern and the expectation of the workers.”
André Bradford has no doubt about “the transparency of the system” and explains that with it “one may understand what is in question; which is directly applied and cannot be the subject of dubious interpretations from a legal and statistical point of view as the salary survey was.”
Deploring the absence of a Representing Commission of the Lajes Air Base Workers since 2005, André Bradford considered that everything could have been different as this commission “has acknowledged rights under the agreement which allows it to participate in labour decisions at the Lajes Air Base, including the salary survey issues.” Moreover, the Regional Secretary mentioned that “the Representing Commission of the Lajes Air Base Workers is entitled to participate in the works to determine the salary survey, which means that workers do not have access to the entities in charge of the salary survey since 2005.”
The absence of the Representing Commission of the Lajes Air Base Workers is due to “a negative influence of the unions,” according to the Regional Secretary of the presidency, who explained that “the commission is elected by the workers and therefore there is no need to be connected to a union, however he added that “this situation is perfectly legitimate.” Nonetheless, for André Bradford, the gradual replacement of the Workers’ Commission by the unions, which represent nearly ten percent of the workers, was not legitimate as the unions have not only brought labour issues into the Air Base, where they could and should be solved, but also outside it and even to a public sphere, which does not allow workers to have an active voice in the labour issues within the Lajes Air Base.”
For the Regional Secretary of the Presidency, the current framework which is “instrumentalised by the unions” is causing uproar, but its effects are indirect since “there is neither a direct participation in the decision-making bodies nor in the problems on a daily basis.
Commenting on the statements made by the opposition parties at the Assembly of the Republic that point out the difficulties in the approval of the new labour agreement, André Bradford is not surprised “that the opposition united again, in a negative coalition, to vote against the Government.”
The Azorean Secretary emphasised “the cooperation tradition between some political forces, with regard to the external positioning of Portugal as well as to the international relation, particularly with the USA and considers that “breaking this tradition for the sake of internal political and partisan quarrels is deploring.
André Bradford is not sure about the outcome of this matter at the national parliament because he considers that there are still “parties with an unclear position as well as parties that do not have an identical position in the Azores and at a national level and added: “if this agreement is not approved at a national level, it will have an adverse effect in the interests of the workers at the Lajes Air Base and those, who neither approve it nor present any alternative will be accountable for this situation.”