UGT sees “unencouraging signs” in the Government and refuses to liberalize layoffs

The general secretary of UGT, Mário Mourão, told Lusa this Wednesday, in Vila Real, that the signals coming from the AD government “are not very encouraging” and rejects the idea of ​​liberalizing redundancies.

In statements before the rallies that mark the celebration of the Labor Day celebrations in Vila Real by the union central, Mário Mourão considered that conversations for social consultation should start where they left off and “point to the future and not to the past”.

“A meeting of the Social Concertation is scheduled for 7 [de maio] and the signals we have received from the statements made by members of the government are not very encouraging”, said the leader of the General Union of Workers.

Mourão continued with questions that touch on what he considers to be the essential points in returning to negotiations: “one year ago today the Decent Work Agenda came into force. Is it to get worse or to get better? Do we want to retain young people with legislation that does not provide workers with conditions of stability? How do we want to do it?”

The recent admission by the government that “the problem of precariousness can be resolved by making layoffs more flexible” is not even a scenario for the union leader.

“It will probably be resolved. Precarious people become unemployed and stop being precarious. This is not the solution that UGT shares. We have a great divergence here about the way in which precariousness is combatted in Portugal”, emphasized Mário Mourão.

The secretary-general defends a “continuous fight” against precariousness, recalling that it “affects the youngest people”, and that this is where they will have to “lead the right fight (…) creating better conditions for these young people to settle down and feel safe in their country.”

Questioning whether the signals given by the government can make employers’ confederations more comfortable, Mário Mourão came up with something new: “from the conversations I have had with my counterparts from employers’ confederations, all of them, with the exception of one, have told me that we have a medium-term agreement, which was assumed by the government, and whenever a new government arrives we cannot start from scratch”.

“The commitments that were made must be the basis of negotiations to build a new agreement”, he reinforced
For the union leader, “the agreement provides that, given the indicators, it can evolve and be improved. This has already been done with the reinforcement of the agreement at the end of last year, going from 810 euros, as predicted for the National Minimum Wage, to 820 euros”.

“There were conditions to go beyond what was agreed, a safeguard clause that provides that, at any time, partners can sit down to improve what is possible in the agreement, but also for companies”, he emphasized .

Regarding the option for Vila Real to celebrate Labor Day in 2024, Mário Mourão stated that it is justified “to give a voice to people and associations in the interior of the country” while “asking for the valorization of salaries”, with attention to “growth in the average wage (…) so that it has the same growth as the minimum wage”.