November arrived in the Algarve and brought with it the usual silence. The hotel shutters close and the terraces, from Vilamoura to Lagos, collect the tables. Via do Infante, finally free of tolls, an achievement of territorial justice that the PS achieved, is now unimpeded. But the irony is cruel: we finally have full mobility on the A22, but fewer and fewer people in the Algarve have jobs to drive to. The fluidity on the tarmac contrasts with the blockage in families’ lives.
For the tourist, it is just the end of the season; For the attentive economist, it is time to look to the future with increased concern. This autumn silence risks becoming deeper with the new labor package that the AD Government is preparing for the country.
The current Executive’s diagnosis seems to be that the job market is too “rigid”. The announced “solution” involves reversing measures from the Decent Work Agenda, facilitating fixed-term contracts and time banks, under the promise that such “agility” will bring investment. You don’t need to be a visionary to understand the end result: applying this recipe to the Algarve is not solving a problem, it is guaranteeing winter social collapse.
At this moment, the laws in force (still protected by the legacy of the previous government) try to make excessive worker rotation more expensive. But the simple threat or promise that “flexibility is coming” already creates dangerous expectations. If the hotel entrepreneur knows that, next summer, he will have carte blanche to hire and fire with less costs and fewer justifications, why would he invest now in retaining talent?
The economic theory is clear: job insecurity undermines productivity. The upcoming labor package sends the wrong signal to Algarve companies. Tell them that they don’t need to innovate, they don’t need to create winter products (in health, sport or culture) to keep the teams. Tell them that the “use and throw away” business model will once again be validated by law.
By wanting to dismantle the barriers to precariousness, the Government is preparing to institutionalize “cheap seasonality”. And there is a hidden cost that rarely appears in the Ministry of Economy’s PowerPoints: the public bill. A more “flexible” job market in tourism means, in practice, more people on unemployment benefits in winter. It is the privatization of summer profits and the socialization of winter costs, paid for by all of us through Social Security.
The Algarve does not need this Government’s “flexibility”. It does need intelligent mechanisms such as a bonus malus in the Single Social Tax: those who offer open-ended contracts pay less; those who abuse rotation pay more.
Winter is already difficult by nature. We do not need a Government that, in the name of economic freedom, comes to legislate so that our precariousness becomes eternal.
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