The Commission for Equality between Women and Men (CIMH) of CGTP has criticized the Government for its proposals to revise maternity and paternity rights, accusing them of displaying “enormous social insensitivity” and promoting the “dehumanization of labor relations.”
“The Government’s proposals aimed at revising maternity and paternity rights reflect a huge social insensitivity and represent a significant setback in the current rights of children, mothers, and working fathers,” stated CIMH/CGTP-IN in an open letter addressed to the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, and the Government.
“In practice, these are merely attempts to dehumanize labor relations and revert to the unfavorable times of the ‘troika’,” it added.
In the open letter made public today, the union federation expressed regret that, instead of combating the “irregular and systematically altered work schedules by employers” and the “unregulated and unfounded proliferation of shift systems and work on rest days and holidays,” the Government follows “the opposite path,” intending to “disregard the opinions, rulings, and judgments of the courts” on flexible work for families with children up to 12 years old.
Furthermore, it argued that, “by intending to limit breastfeeding leave until the child is two years old,” Minister Rosário da Palma Ramalho “completely ignores the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), which advocate that breastfeeding can extend beyond two years.”
“And, inexplicably, it places mothers under suspicion by requiring proof through medical certificates every six months, whereas today it is done annually,” it emphasized.
Moreover, “by expressing the intention to eliminate the right to three justified and paid days off in case of gestational mourning,” the executive “confirms its failure to recognize the devastating impact of this loss, which currently grants mothers and fathers the right to these justified and paid absences,” defended CGTP.
“We are talking about lives. The best interests of children, of mothers and fathers who care, accompany, and nurture, for whom the minister and her Government show profound disdain and total indifference,” accused CIMH.
Arguing that “the country’s problems do not lie in the rights of children or their parents, but in the unfair distribution of wealth, the pursued policy that precarizes employment, promotes long and irregular hours, exploits extensively and pays little,” the union federation highlighted “over one million 900,000 workers working shifts, at night, on weekends, and holidays, of which 48% are women.”
For CIMH/CGTP-IN, the Government “intends to attack and punish” the “political commitment to the promotion of conscious, respected, and protected maternity and paternity” that has been built until now, calling for “all women and men to join a common fight to stop and defeat these proposals.”
The draft labor legislation reform, which, according to the Government, proposes to review “more than a hundred articles of the Labor Code,” has already been presented to social partners and will be negotiated within the Social Concertation framework.
