Antonio Pedro Santos / LUSA
The Minister of Labor, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho, with the Deputy Secretary of State and Labor, Adriano Rafael Moreira
Minister of Labor defends several points of Labor XXI. Carlos Silva assures that there are no conditions for an agreement.
57 meetings have already been held around , the draft Law on the reform of labor legislation that the Government wants to implement; but there is still no agreement.
And, for Carlos Silva, there really won’t be an agreement. The former secretary general of the General Union of Workers (UGT) reinforces that the unions are not convinced by the negotiations.
There will be another meeting on Thursday but “there are no conditions for an agreement” with the Government and the bosses, comments Carlos Silva, in .
But the Government continues to defend the document.
“It is in good economic circumstances that structural reforms”, commented this Tuesday the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security.
Rejecting the idea of a labor law precarious, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho says: “The real precariousness, firstly, is not having jobs for young people. The real precariousness is the dissatisfaction of workers with the low-wage model. The real precariousness is Portugal being the second country with the strictest labor law in 39 countries.”
At the Annual Labor Conference, promoted by , the Minister of Labor highlighted proposals such as the increase in paid parental leave to 100%, the creation of continuous working hours, changes in outsourcing or the individual time bank.
Regarding this last point, Palma Ramalho commented that it benefits the “reconciliation between personal and professional life” and said that this time bank is already done in Portugal – but companies do it outside the law.
On dismissals e reintegration, What is in the proposal is the “expansion of the scope of a rule that already existed”. The Government is not creating an “open bar” for layoffs, he guaranteed.
Carlos Silva, former leader of the UGT, criticized the executive government for having advanced this proposal without having heard the UGT first.
But the minister assures that the Government prioritized social consultation in this reform: “The Government was always in good faith. It made numerous approaches.”
And he trusts UGT: “The result of this negotiation process is currently pending the decision of a partner: UGT. The Government trusts that UGT will honor its tradition of dialogue, commitment and commitment so that workers have better conditions and earn more than they earn today”.
But, as the Prime Minister himself had already said, Palma Ramalho repeated that the Government will still present the document in the Assembly of the Republic, even if the UGT does not accept the proposal.
“It will not be a document like the draft. It will already feature the enrichment that resulted from the many contributions of these nine months. The discussion will move on to the decisive plan”, declared the Minister of Labor.
