The Minister of Labor, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho, is set to “modernize the legal framework of labor” through the preliminary project titled Trabalho XXI, which aims to enhance the “competitiveness of the economy via various measures of labor regime flexibility.”
“This preliminary project, Trabalho XXI, follows the tripartite agreement reached last year with social partners, including the Confederação dos Agricultores de Portugal (CAP),” stated Maria do Rosário Palma, the Minister of Labor, Solidarity, and Social Security, during her participation in the European Seminar “The Social Dialogue and the Pact for Skills in the Agri-food Sector,” organized in partnership with the European Commission in Lisbon.
“This is about fulfilling an objective that was signed there,” she added.
The minister argued that the reform provides the “possibility to stimulate the active life of both young people and seniors” by “promoting a dynamic collective bargaining in the image of the most robust European economies” with more “room for collective contracting.”
“In recent days, I have heard some opinions saying none of this is necessary because the country is in a state of full employment, with unemployment at minimal levels, but this is not our conviction,” she said.
She further noted that it is precisely in times of economic comfort that a structural reform should be contemplated.
“If such a reform is considered during a crisis, we only address the crisis, but we lack the necessary reflection to launch a reform […] specifically, flexibilization of the intermittent work regime, flexibilization of the fixed-term work regime, particularly of short-term fixed-term work,” the minister argued.
The CGTP and the UGT have already rejected the Government’s proposal, but the minister expressed optimism regarding the social dialogue meeting scheduled for Wednesday, the first after the Government presented the draft labor law reform on July 24th, which proposes the review of “more than a hundred” articles of the Labor Code.
The proposed changes under the Trabalho XXI initiative cover areas from parenthood (with changes in parental leave, breastfeeding, and gestational mourning) to flexible work, corporate training, or probationary periods for work contracts, also foreseeing an expansion of the sectors subject to minimum services in case of strikes.
