Presidential candidate Gouveia e Melo stated this Tuesday, December 16, in Setúbal that the country needs to make labor legislation more flexible, but warned that this change cannot be made through the precariousness of workers’ rights.
“We need, in some way, to make our labor legislation more flexible in the face of a new economy that requires new forms of service provision. However, it is not by making workers’ rights precarious that we will enter this new economy, because, for me, the economy requires social cohesion”, said Gouveia e Melowho spoke to journalists before a lunch with the Bishop of Setúbal, Américo Aguiar.
For Gouveia and Melo, the discussion on changes to labor laws could have been postponed until after the presidential elections, especially because they do not see the urgency of discussing, during elections, a matter that “could have been postponed for 15 or 20 days”.
“And there is another thing that is curious: with the current legislation, Portuguese productivity has risen more than the productivity of the European average, which shows that it is not a question of labor legislation that is harming Portuguese productivity. We have more organizational problems, problems of a State that, in some way, suffocates the economy – suffocating with bureaucracy, with slow justice -, and we are doing nothing about it”, said the presidential candidate.
“We are doing, eventually, the simplest things, but those that will truly tear Portuguese society apart. And a disconnected society, without everyone united to solve everyone’s problem, does not seem to be the ideal solution”, he added.
Gouveia e Melo also considered that, “in the Government’s proposals, there was a need, or there was an attempt, to make work more precarious through fixed-term contracts and fixed-term and uncertain-term contracts”.
“These contracts exist in law so that companies, when they feel small fluctuations in the market, can adjust their workforce to these fluctuations in the market for a short period of time. Extending the terms of these contracts means that we start hiring permanently using an instrument that was created to respond, temporarily, to small fluctuations. This makes no sense, it will not increase the competitiveness of companies, it will not improve our economy, it will make work precarious and harm workers, who are a large part of Portuguese society”, reiterated the presidential candidate.