Siemens redundancies highlight lack of protection

A recent round of collective dismissals at Siemens Portuguese operations, begun in February 1998, highlights perceived deficiencies in the current mechanisms providing collective protection for workers in Portugal.

The Portuguese subsidiary of the German-owned electronics company, Siemens, began a collective dismissal procedure involving 208 workers in February 1998, completing the final closure of a facility in Porto Alto that had provided 400 temporary, short-term and permanent jobs.

According to the Southern Union of Electrical Industry Workers (Sindicato das Indústrias Electricas do Sul), there is no basis for relocating the Porto Alto plant's activity to another Siemens facility at Casal do Marco. The company had been the beneficiary of resources from the Community Support Framework and had promised that 20% of jobs created would be permanent, which it fulfilled. The dismissals at Porto Alto are currently taking place because of the loss of the plant's only client. The company proposes to transfer a limited number of workers to Casal do Marco.

According to the union, Portugal's law regulating dismissals is ultimately very permissive in practice, though it aims at providing protection. Dismissals can be dealt with only through legal processes and the mechanisms of proof required are difficult for the workers to deal with. As for the public authorities responsible for labour, employment and social security, they are merely observers. At times, these bodies are claimed to be unavailable for working out solutions to collective redundancy situations, which thus rarely appear.

The solutions to problems arising in the labour market in Portugal continue be legal in nature, although, more and more, these do not lead to satisfactory results- and nor do the existing mechanisms for the reintegration of workers. This fact leads some observers to believe that the implementation of the National Action Plan on employment in response to the EU Guidelines for Member States' employment policies 1998- which includes new measures to create incentives for the reintegration of workers and to promote their adaptive capacity, along with increasing involvement of the social partners - may bring solutions for these situations. The objective of trade unions is, fundamentally, an increase in the creation of permanent jobs.