The Minister of Labor stated that there are only “two or three issues” preventing an agreement between the Government and social partners. UGT says it is “far away” from the agreement and explains that the evaluation of the document delivered to the union is still to be done.
In the opening speech of the Social Concertation meeting, released to journalists by the office, the Minister of Labor recalled “the path” taken as part of the discussion of changes in labor law and indicated that over these “almost nine months” it was possible to reach consensus on “more than 80 standards”having reached “this final stage with only a dozen themes on the table”.
“Thus, we can say that today only two or three themes separate us”said Rosário Palma Ramalho, refusing, however, to detail which ones, given that “negotiations are still ongoing”.
The Minister of Labor He therefore says he has “every conviction” that it will be possible to “reach an agreement between the social partners on this dossier” before submitting the bill to parliament.
“In fact, having reached this point, it would be very strange if we were unable to do so and above all very incomprehensible for the Portuguese, whether they are workers or businesspeople”, reads the document released by the Government while the Social Concertation meeting was taking place.
Rosário Palma Ramalho warns, however, that the Portuguese “will not realize that this process drags on any longer”, saying, therefore, that he will “close this negotiation phase in the next few days”.
UGT contradicts minister and guarantees that agreement “is far away”
I and UGT guarantees that the agreement is still far from being reachedexplaining that there are matters that the union unit has not seen.
In statements after leaving the meeting Social Concertation, Mário Mourão clarified that there are matters that have not been seen, noting that he doesn’t know if “they were already there or if there is some mistake, we have to clarify”.
“We will have to carry out this in-depth assessment and only after seeing the specific document will we make an assessment of what was delivered to us today”, said the union leader.
In recent months, the government has chosen to meet with the UGT and the business confederations, leaving the CGTP out of the meetings that have taken place at the Ministry of Labor, considering that the trade union central has placed itself on the sidelines of the negotiations from the beginning by asking for the proposal to be withdrawn.
The changes in labor law returned to the Social Concertation table today, that is, almost a week after the UGT rejected the written proposal submitted by the executive at the end of March, even though the verbal concessions made by the Government at the meeting on April 6 were explained to the members of that body.
The ‘bosses’ issued a joint statement on Sunday accusing the union center of ignoring consensus and adopting a stance that compromised trust and good faith in negotiations.
