Portugal: final adoption of Labor Code reform

On Friday 19 July Portugal’s National Assembly definitively adopted a series of amendments to the country’s Labor Code. While social collaboration initiated the reform process and several discussion stages followed, the resulting agreement has fallen short of securing the signature the major Communist Party leaning CGTP union. While the reform does not wholly revise the former Labor Code that was adopted in 2012 during the throes of the austerity period and as required as part of the international ‘Troika’ economic bailout plan (UE/IMF/ECB from 2011-2014), it does revisit some of the 2012 modifications and especially those treating fixed-term employment relationships, and represents an attempt to tackle employment uncertainty, with the noteworthy introduction of additional contributions to be paid by companies making ‘excessive’ recourse to this form of employment.