Pilar González

Labour market regulation and collective bargaining in Portugal during the crisis: Continuity and change

This article examines the changes to employment regulation in Portugal during the sovereign debt crisis and assesses their impact on collective bargaining in manufacturing. The changes were wide-ranging and had a negative immediate impact on the process and outcome of bargaining. While this is consistent with the experience of other EU member states in similar circumstances, the changes in Portugal continued the pre-crisis path of reform. Despite significant corrosion and weakening of collective bargaining, there were also signs of resilience. Nevertheless, prospects for a renewed regulatory role for collective bargaining still appear uncertain. We offer some explanations for the distinctive experience in Portugal.

Education and gender wage differentials in Portugal: what can we learn from an age cohort analysis?

Important changes characterize the recent evolution of the schooling of workers in Portugal. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consequences of those changes in the gender wage gap. In particular, we analyze and compare the way that this process has evolved in the groups of young workers and older workers. Our findings suggest that the major part of the pay gap refers to employer discrimination practices for both age group cohorts: in the case of the younger workers, discrimination plays an increasing role in explaining the wage gap; whereas for the older workers, discrimination remains stable over time.

Still holding on? Inequality, labour market and middle-income groups in Portugal

While recent studies have highlighted the phenomenon and risks of increased inequalities between the top and the bottom of society, little research has so far been carried out on trends relating to the median income range that generally represents the middle class. This volume examines the following questions: what are the main transformations in the world of work over the last 20 years in terms of the labour market, social dialogue, and conditions of work, wages and incomes that may have affected the middle class? How has the middle class been altered by the financial and economic crisis? What are the long-term trends for the middle class in Europe?

The European Social Model in a Context of Crisis and Austerity in Portugal

The Portuguese implementation of the European Social Model (ESM) has not been immune to the effects of the Great Recession and of the austerity measures adopted subsequent to the sovereign debt crisis and the bailout of the Portuguese economy. We will demonstrate that the Portuguese experience shows both similarities to the effects observed in other countries (under adjustment conditionality or simply affected by the consequences of the Great Recession for public fi nances) and very distinctive outcomes. A large number of reasons can be invoked to explain the ambivalence of the crisis effects on the implementation of the ESM in Portugal. In this introductory section, the explanation will focus on the historical context of the ESM in Portugal, responsible for two main characteristics of the Portuguese model: its recent realization and its contextdependence. In our analysis, three main pillars of the ESM in Portugal will be analysed: the public education system, the national health system and social protection. Regulation of the labour market will be considered as a transversal dimension, being very sensitive to growth dynamics. Other dimensions, such as social cohesion and the regulation of territorial cohesion (the territorial welfare state) are not fully developed, mainly due to their weak manifestation in Portugal before the arrival of democracy.