Lisbon (AFP) - Widespread disruption hit Portuguese air travel and trains, hospitals and schools on Thursday as the unions called the biggest nationwide strike action for more than a decade against government labour reforms.

Underground metro stations in the capital, Lisbon, were shut while ferries and trains ran a skeleton service, with departure boards overwhelmingly announcing cancellations.

“I got up at four o’clock to go to work but I’m stuck because I’ve still not managed to get a train,” 20-year-old Nairene de Melo, a hotel employee, told AFP at one station linking the city centre with its southern and western suburbs.

Shops, cafes and restaurants were open but with fewer customers than usual.

“It’s a lot calmer than normal,” said Fernanda Marques, 64, who works at a cafe near the station, as she set up tables on the terrace.

“People have organised themselves in advance.”

Traffic was also lighter than a normal weekday morning and it was calmer, too, at airports, after national carrier TAP Air Portugal cancelled more than 200 flights.

Portugal’s largest car factory – a Volkswagen group plant located in the southern Setubal region – ground to a halt.

- ‘Attack’ on work -

According to unions, refuse collection was at a standstill along with dozens of hospital departments handling non-urgent cases.

Both the national doctors’ union and the main teaching union said most of their members were taking part.

But a government spokesman insisted that “the vast majority of Portuguese people are at work”, likening the walk-out to “a partial strike in certain areas of the public sector”.

Unions have been infuriated by a draft law proposed by the right-wing minority government that it says aims to simplify firing procedures, extend the length of fixed-term contracts and expand the minimum services required during a strike.

Prime Minister Luis Montenegro insisted that the labour reforms, with more than 100 measures, were intended to “stimulate economic growth and pay better salaries”.

But the communist-leaning CGTP and more moderate UGT unions have lambasted the plans. And the walk-out is Portugal’s biggest since June 2013, when the country needed International Monetary Fund and European Union help to overcome a debt crisis.

CGTP secretary general Tiago Oliveira told AFP the reforms were “among the biggest attacks on the world of work”.

- Support for strikers -

Out of a working population of some five million people, around 1.3 million are already in insecure positions, Oliveira said.

With Portugal set to elect a new president in early 2026, Oliveira said he considered the strike was “already a success” even before it started, as it had drawn public attention to the labour reforms.

Public opinion is largely behind the action, with 61 percent of those polled in favour of the walk-out, according to a survey published in the Portuguese press.

On the eve of the strike, Montenegro said he hoped “that the country will function as normally as possible… because the rights of some must not infringe on the rights of others”.

Although his party lacks a majority in parliament, Montenegro’s government should be able to force the bill through with the support of the liberals and the far right, which has become the second-largest political force in Portugal.

The left-wing opposition has accused Montenegro’s camp of not telling voters that workers’ rights roll-backs were on the cards while campaigning for the last parliamentary elections.

Although Portugal has recorded economic growth of around two percent and a historically low unemployment rate of some six percent, the prime minister has argued that the country should take advantage of the favourable climate to push through reforms.

Armindo Monteiro, head of the main employers’ confederation, the CIP, condemned the strike and told AFP the government’s draft law was only a “basis for discussion” aiming to correct the “misbalance” caused by labour changes made by a previous left-wing government.