PLMJ
  November 20, 2003 - Lisbon, Portugal

The New Portuguese Labour Code: A Peaceful Reform
  by Abel Mesquita

The Labour Code approved by Law no. 99/2003 of 27 August will come into force on 1 December next, the first stage of the labour law reform thus coming to a close. Driven by the pressing need to endow the country with more flexible and investment, productivity and employment generating labour laws, the reform was at first enthusiastically backed by the employers’ confederations and firmly opposed by the trade unions. However, now that it has been concluded, it does not particularly fill entrepreneurs with enthusiasm nor does it justify the workers’ contention. Both have already understood that, in essence, the changes in the structure of the labour relations, which we will succinctly address in this Newsletter, have not been very profound. In addition to significant limitations to the reform, imposed by the Constitution, the negotiations on the Code between the Government and the employers’ and trade unions’ confederations at the Standing Committee for Social Dialogue neutralised the more advanced solutions contained in its initial version, which were called for by employers and contested by the unions. The result of the process is a complex Code, which is difficult to apply and precisely for this reason does not possess the desirable virtue of simplifying individual and collective labour relations. Meanwhile, investment, productivity and employment continue to follow their own course in the Portuguese economy, apparently insensitive to the approaching coming into force of the Labour Code. The high expectations surrounding the labour reform have vanished. The Code has not yet come into force, but it has already ceased to be a priority in the social agenda. It indeed turned out to be a peaceful reform. Abel Mesquita ([email protected])