Metro cleaning workers refuse to work due to lack of protection

About 100 cleaning workers from the private company that provides services at Metro do Porto refused to work this Sunday “for lack of protective material” from Covid-19, such as gloves and disinfectant.

“Gloves and disinfectant are lacking. Until there are gloves and disinfectant, the approximately 100 workers refuse to work. All employees, whether from the Metro company or from companies serving the Metro, must be protected against the coronavirus,” said Eduardo Teixeira, of the Union of Workers of Concierge, Surveillance, Cleaning, Household and Miscellaneous Activities (STAD).

The official warned that the Metro do Porto contingency plan “must be comprehensive to all workers” and ensure that employees of private contracted companies, whether security or cleaning, “are as protected as those of Metro”. Otherwise, they put themselves at risk and put other employees at risk.

The union leader clarified that, with this, he does not mean that Metro do Porto has to solve the problem, but that the issue has to be resolved, under penalty of jeopardizing the rest of the contingency plan effort. “The company’s contingency plan only advances if all workers are protected,” he said in statements to the Lusa agency.

Contacted by Lusa, a Metro do Porto source revealed that he is intervening with Via Porto, which holds the service concession, to “try to quickly resolve” the problem with Iberlim, the cleaning company in question.

Eduardo Teixeira, from STAD, told Lusa that he has already been in contact with the company and that it will “see what material they have in stock to solve the problem”. The issue, warned the union leader, is that “companies are starting to have difficulties in acquiring protective material”, because “all the available stock is being directed to the National Health Service”.

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