The announcement was made by the Frente Comum’s director, Ana Avoila, after a meeting between union bosses and the secretary of state for public administration, Fátima Fonseca, at the Ministry of Finance.

Avoila started by saying that "the pressure that has been exercised in recent times" on the government had borne fruit, in the form of promotions for some mid-level civil servants whose career progression had been blocked.

"But we don’t want to stop here,” she went on. “The government is not responding to the proposal for salary increases and so we are going to fight.

“We’ve scheduled a week of struggle from 12 to 23 March [...] and a national demonstration for 16 March for all workers to express their dissatisfaction and demand salary increases and decent careers.”

The Frente Comum leader cited Portugal’s current strong economic growth, saying that she could not understand why public servants cannot be given pay increases this year, after years of pay freezes and cuts.