Government really wants to mess with labor law: Minister explains what will change

A minister of Labour, Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho, confirmed, on monday, the intention of the government to move forward with a labour reform and even points out two specific themes: wage transparency and digital platforms. 

In Parliament, Palma Ramalho thus promised “transposing european directives on digital platforms and wage transparency“ – at a time when the government is failing on the latter. 

He also talked about adapting the public vocational training system to new forms of work”, continuing to reduce the youth unemployment rate and updating pensions at the legal rate.

Labour reform is “inevitable”

On this subject, the Minister for Labour said that the review of labor legislation “could have been done calmly and without a fuss” and insisted that this “is inevitable”, even though he admits that “it may well not be for this government”.

In response to socialist deputy Hugo Oliveira, Rosário Palma Ramalho insisted that the “reform of labor law will be inevitable”, arguing that it is “deeply inappropriate to work in the digital age”“.

“ It could be this government, it could be another government. It may even be a government of the Socialist Party” or “it may well not be by this government,” added the Minister for Labour, Solidarity and Social Security who was heard in the context of the general assessment of the proposed State Budget Law for 2027 (OE2027).

PRR? Without reprogramming “it would not have been possible to meet the goals”

The minister also said that without a “downtime reprogramming” of the investments of the PRR under the Ministry of Labor, it would not have been possible to meet the goals and ensured that no work will be concluded.

“ When AD reached the government the targets of the PRR [Recovery and Resilience Plan] were already defined by the PS Government”, but “the implementation rate of targets in the case of the Ministry of Labour was very low”, said Rosario Palma Ramalho.

According to the ruler, “in some cases” the execution of these goals was “practically inexpressive” and there were also cases of “unrealistic” goals.

Among the examples given by the governor of low revisions were the targets for the acquisition of electric vehicles for social responses, interventional public space or interventional housing and public buildings.

The Minister of Labor indicated that this circumstance led to “several reprogramming” and admitted that without this it would not have been possible to meet the totality of the targets.

“ If we hadn’t reprogrammed, and in particular the reprogramming down, we would not have been able to meet the targets.”- he did.

On September 2, the government had announced that all PRR targets under the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security were met, with investments totaling EUR 1.4 billion.