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On Friday more than 100,000 Brazilians hit the streets in 26 state capitals in the latest round of massive mobilizations against President Michel Temer's attacks on public pensions and the retirement system.
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"Many people are thinking about (the election of) 2018. But I think that we must concentrate our energies now to avoid losing our rights at this moment," opposition Worker Party congressman Arlindo Chinaglia told EFE.
The largest mobilization took place in Sao Paulo where 70,000 took over the heart of the city. Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Recife, Salvador and Fortaleza all saw large protests as well.
Friday's mobilization comes just two weeks after another national strike on March 15 marked the beginning of "the calendar of an intense agenda" to "denounce the setbacks that penalize workers, such as reforms to the retirement system and labor legislation," according to organizers.
Congressman Ivan Valente, of the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party, told EFE that "public outrage is rising, mainly because of the social welfare reform."
Despite the ongoing corruption scandal engulfing Temer's government — which came to power last year in a parliamentary coup — he is trying to change the pension system which would reduce benefits, raise social security contributions by civil servants and set the minimum age of retirement at 65 in a country where people work on average until the age of 54 years before retiring.
It also eliminates special pensions for the education and agriculture sector, removes retirement benefits based on the minimum wage, which according to the head of the Landless Worker Movement, Joao Pedro Stedile, almost tripled during the governments of Inacio "Lula" da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.
This, combined with proposed labor law reforms to make third-party outsourcing easier, threatens to gut what is left of the already precarious middle class.
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