Lisbon, May 14, 2026 (Lusa) - Portugal's government is meeting with the cabinet on Thursday to approve a bill revising the country’s draft labour bill, which will be submitted to parliament, and which has not secured the agreement of the social partners.
Prime Minister Luís Montenegro made the announcement on Wednesday during the inauguration of the new president of Portugal’s Commerce and Services Confederation.
He said that the government had made an enormous effort in the talks among the government, unions and employers to reach an agreement on the draft labour bill, and accused the UGT (Socialist-backed General Workers' Union) of having been “intransigent and inflexible” in this process.
On 7 May, the labour minister announced that negotiations on changes to the draft labour bill had concluded without agreement, following talks involving the government, unions and employers, also accusing the UGT union of being intransigent and of not having yielded on any point.
Rosário Palma Ramalho said that the government would submit a bill to parliament based on the initial draft, incorporating the contributions it considered useful and which it had drawn from this process.
On 24 July 2025, Montenegro’s government presented the draft labour bill, called "Work XXI", as a far-reaching overhaul of the Labour Code that contains over 100 amendments.
The amendments proposed in July were met with a resounding 'no’ from the trade union confederations, which claimed that it was an attack on workers’ rights, leading the CGTP (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers) and the UGT to call for a joint general strike on 11 December 2025.
In recent months, the government has chosen to meet with the UGT and the four business confederations at the labour ministry, leaving the CGTP out, saying that the trade union confederation had sidelined itself from the negotiations from the outset by demanding the withdrawal of the proposal.
The CGTP accused the government of being deeply undemocratic and of adopting an unconstitutional stance by convening parallel meetings alongside the plenary meetings with social partners, and has scheduled a new general strike against the reform for 3 June, but this time without the participation of the UGT.
JMF/MYAL // ADB.
Lusa
