An official source from Continente stated that "the operation in Continente stores is proceeding with complete normality". Similarly, an official source from Pingo Doce said that no stores are closed and that "everything is operating normally". Lidl and Auchan were contacted but have not commented so far. Today, Labor Day, there is a strike by trade and service workers called by the Union of Trade, Office and Service Workers of Portugal (Cesp, affiliated with CGTP) and also by the Union of Service Sector Workers (Sitese, affiliated with UGT). In the morning, the leader of the Union of Trade, Office and Service Workers of Portugal (Cesp) Célia Lopes told Lusa that "excellent adhesions" are being registered, pointing to partial closures of stores and total closures of some services, especially in large-scale food distribution. Célia Lopes explained that, "for example, in the Auchan chain there are already closed counters in stores in the Algarve", and that, "in the center and south of the country, Auchan's own gas stations are closed". She also stated that the Lidl store in Barreiro opened with only two managers, which the union considers to be without the minimum safety conditions to open. The unionist lamented the "inertia of the competent authorities in supervising" the right to strike. At the top of the demands of trade and service workers are wage increases. "10/15 years ago, at the top of their careers, any worker in a distribution company received close to 200 euros above the national minimum wage, today these same workers receive the minimum wage", said Célia Lopes. The union also denounces "enormous pressure towards the deregulation of working hours" in the sector, "due to the imposition of hour bank systems, in which workers, who already have completely unregulated hours, would only know the time of entry, never knowing what time they would leave". She also stated that due to schedules that extend into the night (there are shopping centers that operate until midnight and workers with working hours until 00:30/01:00) and the serious lack of public transport, there are reports of "workers spending dozens, some even hundreds of euros, every month on Uber to be able to travel home at the end of the day". The union demands the reduction of working hours to 35 hours per week, the closure of commercial establishments on Sundays and holidays, and the limitation of operating periods, so that these units cannot be open beyond 10:00 pm. Today is Labor Day, with thousands of people all over the country taking advantage of the holiday to celebrate the date, especially in initiatives by the trade union centers CGTP and UGT. Labor Day is a date celebrated internationally, always celebrated on the first day of May, based on May 1, 1886, when a strike began in the North American city of Chicago for the reduction of working hours to eight hours. Then, there was violent repression by the authorities of the United States of America, who killed dozens of workers and sentenced four union leaders to death. 50 years ago, in Portugal, the celebration of May 1, just one week after the April 25 revolution, was a great popular demonstration. All over the country, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets showing their joy and with demands such as 'right to strike', 'end the war now' or 'return of the soldiers', according to the photographs of the time. In Lisbon, it is estimated that 500,000 people were at the 1974 Labor Day demonstration. Read Also: Teixeira Duarte reduces losses to 3 million in 2023 (Portuguese version)