The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) reiterated its criticism of the government on Friday regarding proposed changes to labor laws, describing them as “a declaration of war on workers.”
“The PSD/CDS government, with support from Chega and Iniciativa Liberal and the PS’s facilitation, is advancing policies that serve capital by exacerbating exploitation, dismantling public services, attacking the democratic regime, and compromising national sovereignty,” stated Francisco Lopes, speaking to journalists at the PCP headquarters in Lisbon.
He added: “The government announced a labor package that constitutes a declaration of war on workers. It is a violent assault on fundamental rights.”
Francisco Lopes further emphasized that “this package aims to worsen the unsustainable situation of low wages, promote dismissals without just cause, generalize precariousness increasing insecurity, regulate working hours more deeply promoting unpaid work, disrupting workers’ personal and family lives, and reducing the rights of mothers and fathers as the basis of effective children’s rights.”
“Alongside the direct attack to individual rights intended to weaken them further, there is an intent to attack collective workers’ rights, to weaken collective bargaining, to challenge the right to assembly, intervention, and union information, and to limit the right to strike, a decisive weapon to defend rights and dignity and improve living conditions,” he continued.
He also mentioned that “they talk for decades about the rigidity of labor legislation” in order to “confuse rigidity with rights protection to increase the power and rigidity of instruments that destroy rights and degrade living conditions.”
“In a situation marked by labor legislation unfavorable to workers, the responsibility of successive PSD/CDS and PS governments, which include harmful norms that need to be repealed, this proposal for regression in the revanchist conception of the Troika times not only maintains deeply negative contents but aims to aggravate them,” he stated.
He highlighted: “It is unacceptable. It is necessary to face and defeat the labor package”.
Changes to Labor Law: What’s Changing? Understand
On July 24, the government approved, in the Council of Ministers, a draft of a “profound” labor legislation reform, which will include the revision of “more than a hundred articles of the Labor Code.”
The purpose of the ‘Work XXI’ reform is to make labor regulations more flexible, which are considered “very rigid,” to increase “the economy’s competitiveness and promote companies’ productivity,” according to the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho.
A draft has been approved in the Council of Ministers to reform labor legislation, which will still be discussed and negotiated with social partners and will include the review of “more than a hundred articles of the Labor Code.”
“We are here to debate with democratic humility,” says the Prime Minister
Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said on Thursday that the labor law is still under discussion among social partners before progressing to political-party discussions, with the final framework yet to be defined.
“Transformations and changes involve discussion, and we are here to debate with democratic humility but with the firmness of having goals to achieve,” said Luís Montenegro.
“We will establish dialogue with social partners, both employers and workers, and we will try to come up with a proposal as consensual as possible. That is the phase we are in now, and another phase of political-party discussion will follow. We haven’t reached that point yet; when we do, we will conduct it and then reach a decision phase,” he explained.
