Portugal took to the streets yesterday, in the first general strike in the last 12 years, to demonstrate against the measures in the labor package (or package) presented by Luís Montenegro’s Executive. Whatever we think about the measures, I believe that this is, above all, a good time to reflect on something that we insist on ignoring in these discussions: the profound inequality in which Portugal lives, socially and at work.
No one denies that the life of a company director is very busy and very difficult – in fact, it’s worth reading the interview with David Dodson, which opens this week’s DV, about this. Let’s think about what the vast majority of people in this or similar positions do: wake up early, check emails (still in bed, many times), go to the gym, have breakfast, say goodbye to their children – possibly even take them to school – go to the company, receive messages from the secretary, have dozens of meetings, make serious and relevant decisions, have lunch [de trabalho]he spends the afternoon as he spends the morning, returns home late, hopefully still sees his children, has dinner cooked by the maid or his wife (most leadership positions are occupied by men) and sits on the sofa – possibly still responding to work messages. Meanwhile, someone tidies up the kitchen and prepares everything so that the cycle repeats itself the next day. Sleep five or six hours, because sleeping the necessary hours has become frowned upon and repeats everything again for five days a week, with the exception of a dinner with friends one night or another, and business trips one week or another – without ever worrying about who the children are staying with, because there is always an alternative, even if it’s a babysitter who you can pay for without thinking too much about it.
Now let’s think about the life of one of the employees of that same company, who is in a considerably lower position. And let her be a woman, so this becomes clearer – despite it being 2025. Wake up early, prepare lunch boxes, breakfast, and dress the children. Leave them at school before 9am, because at that time you have to be clocking in, work all morning, praying that they don’t call from school saying that one of the children has fallen ill; He has lunch in the pantry with his colleagues, and continues working throughout the afternoon while thinking about his shopping and homework list. Run out, pick up the kids from school or ATL or, if you’re lucky, your grandparents’ house, and run home (if you don’t have to stop by the supermarket first). He makes dinner while he takes showers and unpacks lunch boxes, makes sure there are clothes ready for everyone to wear the next day and, when dinner is over, he tidies up the kitchen, puts clothes to wash, checks the to-do list for the next day and even prepares the lunch box for the next day, thinking about what he will do with the days he will have left at the end of his salary. Sleep 6 hours or less because that’s what’s left, and hope that none of the children wake up with nightmares, so that time isn’t reduced.
Of course, I am generalizing, and there are even more unequal cases than these – executives who have an internal employee, driver, personal assistant; cleaning employees, whose days start at 5am taking public transport and end at 10pm with arguments with their children who stay at home, unaccompanied, longer than would be recommended.
The current Portuguese labor law needs to be changed – in its structure and foundations, and above all to adapt to a time that has very different demands from those that existed when it was created. But to do this, we need to recognize what I wrote above: that dignity at work has not been equal for everyone and that, above all, the same hours that make up a day can be profoundly unequal for people who work in the same place. And only when we all want to work towards greater convergence will it be possible to reach a successful conclusion in terms of legislation and labor rights.