The Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho.
The Government will backtrack on labor law. In addition to vacation days, there are changes to dismissals, training hours, twelfths and rules for potatoes. Still, the General Workers Union (UGT) considers it insufficient.
The newspaper reported this Friday that the Government will back down on labor proposal.
According to the morning newspaper, the Government proposed restoring the three days of vacation linked to attendance (going from 22 to 25 dias), which had been removed during the troikagiving up the alternative of proposing the purchase of two days of vacation by workers.
But it’s not just
According to the same newspaper, the Government also retreats from simplifying redundancies in medium-sized companies (between 50 and 250 workers).
Currently, the worker (who is not a member of the works committee or union representative) who is the target of dismissal has the right to appoint witnesses to defend himself against the company’s accusations, which must be heard before the decision is made.
However, in micro-enterprises there is an exceptional regime that provides for some of these formalities to be waived, with the The Government’s initial idea was to extend this possibility to larger companies.
And there is more…
Still according to Público, Reducing the number of mandatory training hours in micro-enterprises by half is on the waymaintaining the mandatory 40 hours per year, and training for part-time workers is guaranteed.
On the other hand, the Government wants to increase compensation for collective dismissals from 14 to 15 days and makes adjustments to the proposal that provides that holiday and Christmas bonuses can be paid in twelfthsmaking the hypothesis dependent on an agreement between the worker and the employer and not just on the “express will of the worker”, as previously stated.
Little news for potatoes
In relation to exemption for breastfeeding, the Government does not give up limiting the exemption (which translates into a reduction in daily working hours by two hours), maintaining the two-year limit for this purpose.
But, contrary to what was predicted in the initial proposal, which required the presentation of a medical certificate at the outset, the new proposal maintains the regime in force and says that this proof is only necessary if breastfeeding continues beyond the first year of the child’s life. In this case, the certificate must be presented every six months.
The executive maintains the intention of eliminating absence due to gestational bereavement, but includes it within the scope of leave due to termination of pregnancy. Therefore, in the new proposal, the mother is “always” entitled to leave lasting between 14 and 30 days, while the father will have the right to be absent for up to three consecutive days.
At the same time, and as stated by the Minister of Labor, according to the same newspaper, the Government wants to introduce continuous working hours in the private sector for workers with children under 12 years old or, regardless of age, with a disability, chronic or oncological illness.
UGT does not surrender: “it is very little”
This would have been an attempt to approach the UGTwhich nevertheless maintains the intention of participate in the general strike scheduled for December 11.
On Thursday, at a press conference regarding the approval of the general strike by the UGT General Council, Mário Mourão confirmed having received a new proposal from the Government “two or three days ago”, but warned that it is “too little” to cancel the strike.
The Government’s draft draft for the revision of labor legislation, which is being debated with the social partners in the Social Concertation, provides for the revision of “more than a hundred” articles of the Labor Code.
The proposal has been heavily criticized by CGTP and UGT, who have already announced a general strike for December 11th, in what will be the first joint strike since June 2013at a time when Portugal was under the intervention of troika.
