“The government acts in coordination and therefore a meeting with the prime minister or sometimes even with other ministers can occur at any moment,” the minister stated to journalists on the sidelines of the inauguration ceremony of the Residência Branco Rodrigues, a care home of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa.
For the minister, the meeting requested by UGT with Luís Montenegro, in the context of negotiations on labor reform, is “a perfectly natural meeting in the context of a negotiation process that is underway, although currently under the threat of a general strike”.
A strike whose “importance,” she emphasized, should not be “denied.”
Highlighting that the meeting “will take place together with the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security,” Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho stressed that the draft labor legislation reform “is a government proposal,” within which the prime minister “intervenes whenever he wants.”
“Therefore, the arguments we have are also the government’s arguments,” she underscored.
The newspaper Expresso reported on Thursday night that Luís Montenegro will receive the UGT next Wednesday, in a “sign of truce before the next social concertation meeting and despite the bilateral negotiations not allowing for any rapprochement” between the government and the union center.
According to the newspaper, citing a source close to the prime minister, the request for an audience reached Montenegro’s office on November 7, at the same time the general strike of December 11 was announced, with the government’s aim being to “seek an agreement, even if after the stoppage,” signaling to the union center that it is taking “the conversations to a higher level.”
CGTP and UGT decided to call a general strike for December 11, in response to the draft labor legislation reform presented by the government.
This will be the first stoppage to bring together the two union centers since June 2013, a time when Portugal was under the intervention of the ‘troika’.
