After the replacement of Salazar by Marcello Caetano in 1969, the regime made some slight democratic openings, one of them was the possibility of workers without any record of illegal political activity participate in the elections for the respective Unions. In 1973 he participated in the election for the leadership of the Lisbon Metallurgical Workers' Union, dominated by the collaborationists of the regime, a characteristic of the corporativist regime of Salazar. Being free of any political suspicion and after being chosen among the MEC workers to integrate the list to the Lisbon Union, he was able to participate in the election and his list, influenced in secrecy by the communists, won it. From April 1974 he was elected to the workers commission of MEC, a role he kept until 1995.