Interim leader Carneiro seeks to legitimise position with internal elections later this month. Image: Estela Silva/ Lusa
Just a day after President Seguro called for political dialogue, the deadlock over the government’s proposals for labour reform appears to have deepened.
Unions walked out of a meeting sandwiched into the busy political calendar yesterday saying it is “impossible to reach an agreement with the government”.
Employers are blaming the unions (UGT and CGPT) – and the government is complaining that the only union it has been talking with (UGT) has been “absolutely intransigent”.
For PS Socialists this all shows that it is not just them that the government “doesn’t get along with”.
“In the end, they also do not get along with other partners who are essential for the dignity of working life and for the competitiveness of our economy,” PS leader José Luís Carneiro said in Évora last night (where he presented his re-candidacy for the party’s job top) – accusing the government of showing “a lack of humility” which is “becoming costly for the country.”
In many respects, this latest spat is ‘noise’: President Seguro has already said that he will not promulgate any government draft law that does not have the support of the unions – thus a lot more in re-drafting will have to take place before the government’s Work XXI enters the statute books.
As for the government’s statement describing the UGT as intransigent, Mr Carneiro registered a degree of “astonishment” that the government had thought there was any glimmer of hope for an agreement, criticising the timing of the meeting (on a day when the new president was being sworn in).
“It’s never too late, nor is it ever too early, but on the day the country’s president took office” (to hold a technical meeting for statutory tripartite talks between the government, employers and unions), “seemed inappropriate”, he said – quite apart from the fact that the “proposals that the government has put on the table are not proposals that solve and respond to people’s needs.”
Carneiro referred to the government’s blueprint for reform as being “particularly harmful to young people, who are thrown into precariousness for longer, (…) particularly harmful to working women, because it makes it difficult to reconcile personal life with professional and family life” and equally “harmful to the most fragile and vulnerable workers”.
“I hope that the government will now create the conditions to resume dialogue on terms that the partners are willing to accept,” he said.
When asked by journalists whether the government should have gone further in supporting the Portuguese people due to the rise in fuel prices caused by the war in the Middle East, the PS leader recalled that he had already told the government and the prime minister, in the parliamentary debate, that they “should prepare for a very demanding situation in terms of the effects” of the Middle East conflict.
“And we addressed three specific issues. On the one hand, fuel costs, on the other hand, food costs and, thirdly, the predictability of increased mortgage costs – which particularly affect younger people,” he added, stressing he is “convinced that, in the coming days and weeks, the government will indeed have to choose the path that the PS proposed in parliament”.
Source: LUSA
