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	Social Pacts in Europe Introductory Page Finland Ireland Italy Netherlands Portugal Slovenia Spain

Country: Portugal

Period: 1996-99

Title of the pact: Strategic Social Pact

Signatory Parties:  Government, the General Workers’ Union (UGT), The Confederation of Portuguese Farmers (CAP), the Confederation of Portuguese Trade and Services, The Confederation of Portuguese Industry.

Goals of the pact: Setting a framework for a joint strategy for employment, competitiveness and development.

Matters agreed:

• General Foundation of the Pact
  • Economic and business policies
    • Energy policy
    • Agriculture, forest, rural development and fisheries policies
    • Environment policy
    • Regional development policy
  • Enhancement of productivity, working conditions and participation
  • Active policies on employment, education, training and the information society
    • General principles
      • Modernisation with more job creation
      • Managing restructuring with professional retraining and social safeguards
      • Taking advantage of employment-intensive areas
      • Enabling development, innovation and employment at the local level
      • Reorganising the functioning of the job market
      • Creating new areas of proficiency and combating social exclusion through education and training
    • Developing an information society
      • Development of an efficient, competitive and accessible national information infrastructure
      • Improve skills for the new types of work in the information society
      • Reform of social safeguards: solidarity, social security and health
      • Tax reform
      • Modernisation of the civil service
• Binding commitments
  • Macroeconomic baseline for 1997-99
  • Employment goal
    • Net creation of about 100,000 jobs over three years
    • Development of the labour intensive construction sector through improvement of the infrastructure (roads and housing)
    • Sectoral and regional programmes for skill development to increase employment
    • Active policies on employment, training and education
      • Improvement of school career guidance and training for school to work transition
      • Improvement of training for the unemployed
      • Reform of employment services and placements
      • Technical and financial support for self employment
      • Job creation in rural and local development
  • Competitiveness goal
    • Economic and social cohesion as a base for competitiveness
    • Support for innovation and development of SMEs
  • Economy and Business
    • Improvement of business environment and governance
    • Establishment of support programmes for internationalisation (trade and business networks), innovation, technical development, and human resource development
    • Housing policy
    • Improvement of tourism activities
    • Development of the transport infrastructure
    • Policies on agriculture, forestry, rural development and fisheries
      • Regulatory improvement
      • Measures to enhance competitiveness (financial provisions, e.g. tax incentives, R&D, and training)
      • Measures to enhance competitiveness of the agro-food stuffs sector
      • Administrative modernisation
      • Modernisation of fishing and agricultural industries through legislative reform and other policy measures
      • Development of human resources
  • Productivity, working conditions and participation
    • Setting out principles, rights and issues to be covered in collective bargaining
    • Improving labour legislation, labour law reforms
    • Combating illegal and child labour
    • Combating racism and xenophobia
    • Promoting equal opportunities
    • Improving labour inspection and labour administration
    • Establish pay guarantee fund
    • Improving safety and health at work
    • Improving social dialogue and participation
  • Active policies on employment, education, training to prepare for the information society
    • Job creation programmes
    • Socially responsible restructuring
    • Local development through creation of labour-intensive industries
    • Improved placements, training especially for young people
    • Improvements in education and social livelihood
    • Combating social exclusion
    • Development of the information society
  • Reform of social safeguard measures
    • Improved funding of social security systems
    • Improvement of insurance for work accidents and illness related to work
    • Improvement of unemployment benefit provisions
    • Improvement of complementary social security schemes
    • Combating poverty
    • Improvement of the health system and its funding
  • Restructuring of the tax system
  • Civil service modernisation and reforms
  • Incomes policy
  • Monitoring compliance of the pact
    • Establishment of a monitoring commission, defining its mandate

Institutions involved:

Standing Committee for Social Dialogue (CPCS) and tripartite monitoring commission (excluding the largest trade union – CGTP, which did not sign the pact)

Background: 

This comprehensive pact was initiated by the Socialist government, in an attempt to use social concertation to introduce a vast modernisation programme through social dialogue.  It included many programmes and policy measures in a much more concrete fashion than those stated in the previous comprehensive pact, the Economic and Social Agreement (AES) of 1990, related to almost every field of economic and social policy.

Impact:

Though the government’s assessment on the progress of implementation of the pact was positive, social partners in general gave a negative assessment.  The UGT stated that the implementation of the measures in the Pact was far behind schedule and many measures in the area of incomes policy, social security, taxation, labour legislation and education had either not been implemented at all, or not properly.  The CIP took the view that the government’s assessment of progress under the pact was highly disorganised and voiced concern that very little was done regarding tax and labour law reform to raise the competitiveness of the Portuguese economy.  In addition, the CIP believed that the parliament impeded true concertation efforts due to its legislative autonomy which did not permit such concertation.

Comments: 

The CGTP was involved in the negotiation of the pact but did not sign it.  This was because they believed that the pact presupposed flexibility in relation to labour law.  They opposed the labour legislation under preparation, based on the pact.  The CGTP also criticised the proposed restructuring of the social security system and the proposals for a wage guarantee fund and regulations governing lay-offs and part-time work.  They took the view that collective agreements, social dialogue and tripartism should be kept separate and that bilateralism should prevail in labour relations.

Full text of the agreement: Available for purchase at http://www.ces.pt/html/e_main.htm