“The government of 2025 is not the same as that of 2024. It is a different government as a state and as an employer,” criticized Mário Mourão during the closing speech of the seminar “Reforming the State by Valuing Salaries and Workers,” held today at the General Union of Workers headquarters in Lisbon.
According to the Secretary-General of the General Union of Workers (UGT), “the discourse of wage appreciation has often been replaced by the talk of businesses, businesses, businesses, and productivity,” a stance that, in his view, is “embedded in the draft reform of labor legislation.”
Mário Mourão reiterates that the UGT “has always favored dialogue and negotiation” and remains at the negotiation table but issued a warning: “Between choosing a bad agreement or street protests, we prefer street protests.”
The Secretary-General of this union central also stated that “UGT will not accept a return to the period when companies fill their pockets” and “workers are left in the background because it is not the time to compensate them,” noting that this situation occurs “in various sectors of activity.”
Mário Mourão also appealed to the government that it should “not take this path” with public administration workers, urging the executive of Luís Montenegro to set an example.
“The country’s largest employer cannot ask the private sector to do what it doesn’t apply within its own house,” he said, urging the government to value “work, invest in working conditions, and ensure career progression” for public employees.
The Secretary-General of the Federation of Public Administration and Public Entity Workers’ Unions (Fesap), re-elected today for a third term, also expressed belief that “negotiation is the way to solve many problems,” but warned: “When negotiation fails, we are left with the instruments to assert our positions.”
Like Mário Mourão, José Abraão also noted that labor legislation applies to “thousands of public administration workers” and the private sector, expressing concern about some anticipated changes in the draft labor revision, particularly changes to strike laws, citing that the current regime “is so complex” that during a public sector strike, “what is decreed as minimum services are the maximums.”
The government’s draft for revising labor legislation, which is being debated with social partners, proposes a revision of “more than a hundred” articles of the Labor Code.
The proposed changes, named “Work XXI,” which the government presented on July 24 as a “profound” revision of labor legislation, cover areas from parenthood (with changes to parental leave, breastfeeding, and miscarriage leave) to flexible working, company training, or trial periods of work contracts, and foresee an expansion of sectors covered by minimum services in the event of a strike.
