Latest news and stories about workplace rights in Portugal for expats and residents.
The European Commission is reviewing Portugal's implementation of the new European Pay Transparency Directive and may initiate infringement proceedings for non-compliance. The directive requires companies to justify salary criteria, moving away from traditional pay models based on negotiation or personal favoritism.
The Authority for Working Conditions (ACT) reports that most of the 4,000 notified companies are actively addressing gender pay gaps, with only 100 sanctions issued for non-compliance to date.
UGT has drafted a counterproposal containing nearly 100 amendments to the Government’s labour package and plans to submit it to the Minister of Labour after the presidential election second round on 8 February. The document is framed as a comprehensive alternative aimed at reshaping the proposed reforms to strengthen workers’ rights, legal protections and workplace standards, and to force substantive negotiation with ministers over the direction of labour law change.
The Union of Workers of Large Supermarkets, Warehouses and Services of Portugal (STGSSP) has accused Revolut of pressuring and 'exploiting' around 1,200 employees in Portugal by imposing 'unrealistic' productivity metrics, after receiving multiple complaints about the digital bank’s labour practices. Revolut rejects the allegations, saying it complies with Portuguese labour law. The dispute highlights tensions between fintech productivity models and workplace rights, and could prompt closer scrutiny from unions and regulators.
The three representative structures for the workers argue that the administration could have negotiated a new agreement without terminating the current one and accuse them of creating pressure on the negotiation process.
In a country where a 'normal' working schedule has become rare, the individual time bank highlights the major misconception of this reform: that there is symmetry between employer and employee. Individual negotiation is a fiction when one party holds all the power. Therefore, one dictates and the other requests. If they listened to the workers, they would know that this mechanism, if individual, serves to extort unpaid hours in a country where 40% of workers claim to be victims of workplace harassment.
Three-quarters of workers in the sector claim to have experienced situations of moral harassment and half of sexual harassment, concludes a study presented by the MUDA – Harassment in the Arts project. DGArtes, ACT, and the sector's union were already aware of the phenomenon but were unaware of its scale.
The MUDA project surveyed 611 professionals connected to the arts world, and about 75% of respondents stated they had experienced moral harassment. More than 49% admitted to having experienced sexual harassment.
Three million women in Portugal experience this. Most without protection.
Press roundup item saying the country is in turmoil while UGT readies a counterproposal to the proposed labour legislation.
