The government’s plan that every council should insist on a 40-hour working week from its workers has been found ‘unconstitutional.’
Most councils anyway had used a deliberate loophole in the legislation to avoid putting pressure on employees to work a full 40-hour week.
But now it's official, the Constitutional Court's panel of judges has decided the whole '35-hour working week' idea was flawed anyway.
Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho now can report to Portugal’s Troika of lenders that he really, really tried to get tens of thousands of local civil servants to work the extra hours, but the court said they didn't have to.
The Constitutional Court's ruling is that the government was "interfering in the collective bargaining agreements between Portugal’s councils and their workers" which the judges saw as “a violation of the principle of autonomy of local government.”
The court’s opinion had been sought by the Union of Public Administration Workers and the National Association of Parishes which will be delighted that its workers can "carry on carrying on," or revert to the old 35-hour week which is far less stressful than five, eight hour days.
Some councils had managed to increase workers’ hours, such as Oporto, which now will have to allow its workers to turn up for work for just 35 hours a week.
Comments
Things had been very badly wrong in Portugal long before the EU, Troika or IMF or whatever got involved trying to put things right. Involved for the greater good of the rest of the EU that cannot keep carrying turkeys. Particularly turkeys that have spent the last 30 years misleading us that they were really swans !
Portugal's in a mess because its workers aren't working hard enough? Nothing to do with misdemeanours on the part of government officials, their corporate cronies, EU commissioners, ECB crooks, IMF liars etc.?
Who benefits from the mess Portugal is in? When you can answer that question you know who to blame.
We must be living in parallel universes. The principle that local government can agree terms and conditions with employees and not be overruled by the national government seems perfectly legitimate to me. Since when is organised crime interested in promoting workers rights?
As for all the good that the troika offered...?! The troika is another name for the international corporate mafia!
As often argued on these pages - local government in Portugal = organised crime. One of many examples of the citizen control system left over from Salazar's time. Having a locally born or connected police chief is another scam that skews citizens rights.
Think of secretive North Korea today, how much the population is being controlled and you begin to get a grip on what Portugal was like for much of the last century. Here too there were big military parades and people told to turn up and look happy!
And so today how little, in essence, has Portugal changed. All the good that the Troika offered now being unravelled.