New ways forward for collective bargaining?

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Debate over the need to resolve the "crisis" of Portuguese collective bargaining has intensified in 2000. In November, a seminar was held to discuss possible ways of unblocking the moribund bargaining system, while two recent studies have highlighted particular problematic features of Portuguese industrial relations and the failure of bargaining to deal with employment and training issues.

Collective bargaining in Portugal is widely perceived to be overly formal, subjective to excessive state intervention, lacking in coherence (with agreements frequently overlapping), poor in content and lacking in innovation. A debate on these problems has been underway for some years, and there has been much analysis of the issues concerned (PT9711147F), but this process has not generated any solutions that might lead to an improvement in the effectiveness of the way that bargaining functions. In November 2000, the Institute for the Development and Inspection of Working Conditions (Instituto para o Desenvolvimento e Inspecção das Condições de Trabalho, IDICT), the government body whose role includes the provision of dispute-resolution services (PT0002183F), held a seminar to discuss this theme with the objective of highlighting two aspects of the situation:

• the need to overcome a model of regulating labour matters which is heavily based on law; and

• the need to introduce new bargaining issues, both socio-economic (such as health and safety and quality) and social (such as the role of work in social integration), which might open up a path to unblocking the current deadlock in the collective bargaining process.

Coming on top of this seminar, two recent publications - summarised below - have added further contributions to the debate on the future of bargaining in Portugal.

Industrial relations

A recent article in a journal published by the Ministry of Labour and Solidarity ("As relações profissionais em Portugal. É possível mudar? É possível não mudar" [Industrial relations in Portugal. Is it possible to change? Is it possible not to change?], Sociedade e Trabalho, No. 7/2000) provides an up-to-date interpretation of the industrial relations system as it has developed over the past 25 years. It states that the system is derived from a combination of three elements:

1. a system of representation of interests based on conflict, which grew out of the process through which democracy was institutionalised in Portugal following its introduction in the mid-1970s, and the need to create social and economic partners for the public authorities;

2. a collective bargaining system that is still based on a model formed in the economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s; and

3. a model of top-level social concertation linked to the commitments which Portugal made during the run-up to joining the euro single currency.

Bearing this context in mind, the article states that

• the representation system has not been rethought since democracy was first institutionalised in the 1970s– something that is particularly true of the division of tasks between trade unions and workers' commission s and of the way in which the principles of freedom of association and representativeness operate;

• the system of collective agreements is now 20 years old. The logic that underpinned its creation was based on the need to create a set of basic rights and obligations that would serve as a reference point around which to organise the labour market, reconcile political democracy and private property and permit the up-rating of minimum wages during periods of high inflation; and

• social concertation has enabled inflation to be reduced and for legislation to be made more flexible without leading to conflict.

The Portuguese system is described as being heavily characterised by "atypical" forms of employment, low levels of unemployment and the absence of any mechanism with which to assess the effectiveness of the social concertation process. In the circumstances, it is therefore necessary to reach a "new social contract" (novo compromisso social) in order to foster changes in industrial relations that are appropriate to the current context of increasing "Europeanisation".

Bargaining on employment and training

A new study carried out with the backing of the Employment and Vocational Training Observatory (Observatório do Emprego e Formação Profissional, OEFP) provides a descriptive analysis of the extent to which formal collective agreements in essential sectors of the Portuguese economy – metalworking, textiles, the graphical and printing industry and telecommunications – contain provisions on employment, qualifications and vocational training ("Conteúdos das Convenções de Trabalho na Óptica do Emprego e da Formação" [Contents of collective agreements from the viewpoint of employment and training], OEFP, 2000).

The study concludes that although the 1996-9 tripartite Strategic Concertation Pact led to the concerted negotiation of a large number of matters (PT9808190F) and a considerable number of laws were subsequently passed in the labour field (PT9912177F), the fact is that sectoral collective bargaining (which continues to be the predominant level) has scarcely addressed issues such as employment, qualifications, work organisation and vocational training, though the social partners do recognise that these are important topics for negotiation. The key obstacles to such a development include:

• the high degree of complexity of these subjects, which have not been debated for a long time and in relation to which both the unions and the employers' associations holds some very rigid and underdeveloped positions of principle;

• the aim of the parties to maintain the homogeneity and unity of the regime that regulates employment conditions – something which discourages any major steps towards new solutions;

• a need to reinterpret certain basic constitutional principles that may be blocking the bargaining process, such as "equal pay for equal work" and "minimum norms"; and

• the existence of overlapping agreements and the need to implement company-level bargaining.

Commentary

Recent discussions, such as the IDICT seminar and the two recent studies, constitute a positive signal that Portugal may be moving towards a way out of the profound crisis in which collective bargaining has been wallowing for some years. However, the work lies ahead to create the grounds for an understanding on the future of bargaining, and to establish the role to be played by the social partners, social dialogue and the various sources of regulation. (Maria Luisa Cristovam, UAL)