Reconfiguring labour market and collective bargaining institutions in Portugal

Abstract

This chapter critically examines the significance of the transformations in employment regulations in Portugal with particular focus on industrial relations and collective bargaining. It critically reviews the significance of changes in institutions and practices following the 2008 international crisis, in particular those resulting from neoliberal austerity policies, under the shadow of the Troika, implemented by a centre-right coalition government. The exercise is twofold. In the one hand, the chapter examines the amplitude and intensity of changes and the continuities and discontinuities compared with past trajectories since the turn of the century, when the country became integrated into the eurozone and subjected to fiscal discipline, increasing competition and asymmetrical shocks. On the other hand, it examines whether the changes in institutions and practices — which were imposed abruptly in exceptional times of economic hardship and contributed to the escalation of the crisis — survived or were abandoned entirely or partially in the post-Troika period (2015—2019).