The National Federation of Trade Unions of Workers in Public and Social Functions (FNSTFPS) said in a press conference that the strike was a measure requested by the workers, who have been pushed to their limits.

The strike notice “brought to the public information that was not being given, that AIMA is not responding, as the immigrants rightly say, because it does not have enough staff to work”, said Artur Sequeira, leader of the federation, explaining that workers are required to work 150 hours a year (overtime) but “they are doing much more, and are under pressure to do so”, are poorly paid and receive these hours many months after the work is done.

“This whole process is one of exhaustion, of discontent, and the workers had to give a signal for a change to take place”, added Artur Sequeira.

The discontent is also due to the “chaos” that, according to union leaders, AIMA is in, and it is not even known how many workers it has exactly.

In a document with 25 needs or constraints felt by workers, some of the complaints reveal confusion, such as difficulty in communicating about schedules or ways of justifying absences, lack of knowledge about team composition, lack of monitoring of workers or lack of communication with management.

Lack of specialized technical personnel, poor working conditions, workers being called to other functions, suddenly and without training, are other complaints, in addition to workers exceeding 150 hours of overtime that are not paid.

The FNSTFPS, which met with the Government at the beginning of the month and expects to hold a new meeting in September, demands political solutions to resolve the problems, that AIMA be provided with a staff map with jobs that respond to real needs, and that it include sociocultural mediators, ending protocols with private social solidarity institutions.

The mediators, the union leader warned, are not linked to the civil service and cannot perform certain tasks or access databases, such as creating reports to support decision-making, when they are doing so.

At AIMA “there are not enough workers, there is no management, there is no regulation to standardize the functioning of AIMA, there are many personnel difficulties in the various sectors and this whole process generates great fatigue among the workers”, Artur Sequeira summarized.

And regarding the mission structure, announced by the Government to solve the problem of the 400 thousand pending cases, the union leader regrets that the process is not yet working, that there are still no hires, and says that removing workers from AIMA to place them in the structure is “uncovering one side to cover the other”.

The problems now being felt, he advocated, should have been solved before AIMA started operating.