The (Portuguese) Council of Ministers approved, on June 2nd, a law proposal that materializes the decent work agenda, contemplating a set of 70 measures that change the labour legislation in force and that will be discussed in the parliament.
Amongst these measures, there is a significant set of changes to the temporary work regime, aiming at fighting fraud in the use of this kind of temporary hiring by companies.
As measures that may condition the current form of temporary employment, we highlight the approximation of the rules for renewal and succession of temporary employment contracts to those of the fixed-term employment contract regime:
(i) strengthening the rules on the succession of temporary contracts, prohibiting the signing of new temporary contracts with associations in a controlling or group relationship, or maintaining common organizational structures with that of the employer;
(ii) in the event of entering into or renewing a temporary contract with an unlicensed temporary employment agency, the contract is converted into an open-ended contract in the temporary company;
(iii) the approximation of the rules for renewal of temporary employment contracts to those of fixed-term contracts, establishing a limit of four renewals;
(iv) obligation to enter into an open-ended temporary assignment contract between the temporary employment agency and the worker whenever the latter is assigned, under successive contracts with different users, for more than four years, in reference to the maximum duration legally foreseen for open-ended contracts.
These limitations on renewals and successions of temporary employment contracts will have implications on the way companies contract and will certainly have serious implications on their decision to resort to this form of labour provision.
Ana Santiago @ DCM | Littler
