Manuel Carvalho da Silva was born in Viatodos, Barcelos, on November 2nd, 1948, in a family of small farmers. Was a trainee at the Carlos Amarante Industrial School, in Braga, where he completed the Electrician Assembler course (1965). He worked as an electrical worker. He interrupted his professional activity to provide compulsory military service, having fought in the colonial war, in Cabinda, between 1970 and early 1972. In 1972/73 he worked at Chromolit Portugal, also doing professional training there in the area of work organization. In September 1973, he joined the company Electromecânica Portuguesa Preh, as a job manager, to whose staff he belonged until March 2011, having been a member of its Workers¿ Committee between 1974 and 2011. Since the beginning of 1974, he has intervened in workers' representation bodies and held various union positions, at the national level and in the European Confederation of Trade Unions and in the CPLP-Trade Union. He was elected coordinator of the CGTP-IN (Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses-Intersindical Nacional) in June 1986 and, between December 1999 and January 2012, he held the position of Secretary General, a designation adopted in this Union Center for the first time. He developed an increasingly intense social and sociopolitical intervention in Portuguese society, responding to requests in a multiplicity of thematic areas, in particular, related to trade unionism, work, employment, social policies, economy and development. Completed academic training at a higher level. In July 2000, he graduated in Sociology at ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, having presented as a conclusion of the course a dissertation entitled ¿Trade union action: transformation and development¿ (Acção sindical: transformação e desenvolvimento), where he carried out a sociological analysis of the labor problems experienced in the Grundig industrial complex, in Braga and in Vale do Ave. He received his PhD in 2007, also at ISCTE, with the dissertation ¿Centrality of work and collective action. Unionism in a Time of Globalization¿ (Centralidade do Trabalho e Acção Colectiva. Sindicalismo em Tempo de Globalização), having obtained the classification of Very Good, with Distinction and Praise unanimously by the jury. He was Visiting Full Professor at Universidade Lusófona between 2011 and 2016. He was Vice-President of the General Council of the University of Minho and is a Member of the Technical-Scientific Council of the Escola Superior de Saúde do Alcoitão. He is a member of the Scientific-Strategic Council of ANESPO and a member of the Institutional Council of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa. He is Chairman of the Board and Coordinator of The Collaborative Laboratory for Labour, Employment and Social Protection (CoLABOR) and coordinator of the Lisbon hub of The Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (CES-UC). Author of several books, book chapters and hundreds of articles, he regularly intervenes in the academic space and in social and political initiatives on topics such as work, employment, trade unionism, the welfare state, development, Europe, globalization. He has collaborated with the media, has been a regular columnist for JN since 2011 and a resident commentator at RR since 2012 and regularly writes, by invitation, for several national newspapers and various (non-scientific) magazines. He produced a few thousand speeches and participated in trade union conferences, congresses, seminars (etc.), among others, on issues of work, employment and trade unionism - particularly at the national, European and Portuguese-speaking levels, as well as some others - as an executive union leader and in particular during the 25 years in which he performed the functions of Coordinator/General Secretary of the CGTP-IN.