Over 1,300 workers subtracted from a company in eight months through a combination of mutually agreed redundancies, early retirement and layoffs. The numbers are impressive and capable of fuelling still further the indignation of those who shook their heads in disapproval and shock at the 400 jobs lost at the Galp Matosinhos refinery. Or those who have already forgotten that the same happened in January when EDP closed its coal power station in Sines with similar impacts on the human resources of those directly and indirectly dependent. A “disgrace” that deserves “to be made an example of” due to the lack of humanity, the comments about Galp issued by the same politician responsible for signing, when managing a public company, the decision to bid farewell to three times more employees than any of the energy companies disposed of.

In the first eight months of this year, TAP negotiated the departure of three times more people than Galp or EDP. This comes in addition to the 1,900 positions lost in the labour force of the Portuguese flagship carrier since the state once again sat down behind the controls. The 3,200 departures in around a year make up part of the emergency management of the airline company, a terrible but necessary evil to guarantee the sustainability of the company through the times of Covid. This does not reduce the scale of the social drama but is justified by the circumstances – as happened with the energy companies, trapped between the pandemic and the direct effects and the acceleration of the new world order towards the decarbonisation of the economy, handed down from Brussels and greeted with enthusiasm by European governments and citizens in general aware of importance of the climate transition to getting a better environment. Factors that also contribute to the sharp drop in the demand for fuels.

The greatest driver of the green electrification of the economy, the Minister of the Environment had no doubt about welcoming as good news the end of oil refining in Matosinhos even going on to venture the scope for the unit to be transformed and refine lithium. And, furthermore, he revealed concern over “the fate of workers operating that industrial unit” and, back in December when the closure was announced, Matos Fernandes recalled the role that the European Fund for Fair Transition might play in mitigating the social effects, with 200 million reserved for Portugal under the scope of this mechanism to protect workers from impacts and finance new businesses that enable the transition to decarbonisation.

The Prime Minister also deemed the closure of the Galp refinery “a very welcome contribution to this effort to reduce CO2 emissions”, pointing to Matosinhos as “an example of the climate transition” even while highlighting the cost of “forcing hundreds of people to change jobs or requalify for new activities”.

Despite the pressures of the circumstances arising from the pandemic, in recent months, Galp has taken initiatives to minimise this impact – as already done by EDP -, relocating 160 workers to other areas in the group and agreeing to the departure of another 60 while still maintaining 100 jobs allocated to the process of dismantling Matosinhos by 2024. I repeat, none of this reduces the drama of those left without direction or opportunity for reconversion. However, taking into account that the government has itself had to decide to dispense with over 3,000 members of staff from TAP in the last year, it is not understandable how António Costa and Matos Fernandes now come along with crocodile tears when the same path is taken by a private company – in which the state retains a 7% stake which paid out dividends totalling 23 million euros last year, which left the prime minister “most satisfied” at a time when the pandemic had already forced the temporary suspension of activities at the Sines and Matosinhos refineries following the movement restrictions imposed in order to stop the spread of Covid.

One year ago, the World Economic Forum was warning of the brutal destruction of employment due to the digital transition and the consequent radical disruption to business and working models – the fourth industrial revolution as the organisation designated the transformation ongoing throughout the globalised economy –, accelerated by a pandemic that left the world highly dependent on virtual connections and strongly committed to extremely swift progress towards environmentally sustainable models. In 2016, the same organisation had predicted the disappearance of five million jobs, warning of the social risks of not acting immediately in terms of training, professional requalification and transformation of the labour force with the competences for the future, pointing to the eventual obliteration of 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025.

The pandemic did not just accelerate “the arrival of the future in the workplace” but also pre-empted a social scenario characterised by brutal inequalities, highlighted the WEF, warning of the urgency for “companies, government and workers to unite their efforts to implement a new vision for the global workforce”.

It is precisely the opposite that we have witnessed, with bloated states, which on principle penalise and mistrust tax payers – individuals or companies. A state that preaches what it does not practice, that penalises private initiative rather than seeking to provide incentives, that imposes a supposed equality rather than rewarding positive differences, that feeds the opposition between companies and workers that are kept trapped by subsidies and handouts across a large part of the country. A state that opposes, through rules, bureaucracies and taxes, the Portugal that it wants to make and, through transformation, to once and for all get on the European train.

Not now making the cultural transition that forces the transformation that we are now experiencing is to condemn the country to weakness.