Rosa Sousa is elected president of UGT with 413 votes in favour

A social Democrat Rosa Sousa was today elected president of the UGT for the next four years, with 413 votes in favour, 78 votes against, 17 white and four null votes, replacing Lucinda Damaso in office, which he has held since 2013.

Graduated in History and with a graduate degree in Cultural and Political History, Rosa Sousa is president of the Union of Technical Boards of the State and Entities with Public Purposes (STE) since December 2025, having previously held positions as treasurer and vice president in the same structure.

The election of Rosa Sousa in the 15th Congress of the UGT, which ends today in Figueira da Foz, follows after a standoff in the proposal for candidate to succeed Lucinda Damaso in the presidency of the trade union central.

Within the UGT there is an implicit agreement that dictates that Social Democratic Workers (TSD) indicate the candidate for president and the socialist tendency chooses the candidate for Secretary-General, even though the statutes admit that other candidates may present themselves to Congress, provided they meet the necessary support (20%), which never happened in the history of the UGT.

The TSD even proposed the name of the PSD deputy and president of the SINTAP Francisco Pimentel to the national secretariat, however, the proposal did not come together and was rejected by the maximum executive body of the trade union centre.

Before this “impasse”, the TSD met in emergency on Wednesday, having chosen the former mayor as the final candidate.

Currently linked to the Directorate General of Arts in the Public Ministry, Rosa Sousa also has a political career, having been president of the parish Coração de Jesus (present-day parish of Santo António), in Lisbon.

Rosa Sousa succeeds social democrat and former president of PSD Lucinda Damaso, who was president of the UGT between April 2013 and today.

Socialist Mario Mourão was reelected for a second term as Secretary General of the UGT, with 449 votes in favour, 46 votes against, 14 whites and three nulls.

Mário Mourão is president of the Portuguese Financial Sector Workers Union (SBN), former Northern Banking Union, since 2005, and also Secretary General of the Socialist Trade Union Tendency (TSS).

Created on October 28, 1978, in a Constitutive Assembly in which its statutes and the declaration of provisional principles were approved, the UGT would formally become a trade union central in January of the following year.

The creation of the country’s second trade union center resulted from a movement that emerged in 1976, the “Open Letter Movement”, which criticized the performance of the Interunion.

In January 1979, the first congress of the UGT was held in Porto, where Socialist Torres Couto was elected Secretary General and Social Democrat Miguel Pacheco was chosen as President.