Decree 70/2023 carries significant implications for employers, influencing hiring practices, labour relations, and overall business operations within the country.
Key Points of the reform are the following:
- Enhanced Flexibility in Employment Contracts: It introduces more adaptable contractual frameworks, allowing employers greater flexibility in managing workforce needs in response to economic fluctuations.
- Incentives for Job Creation: It offers fiscal incentives and reductions in employer contributions for businesses that create new jobs, aiming to stimulate employment and economic growth.
- Collective Bargaining and Union Activity: It eliminates mandatory solidarity dues without employee consent and revises collective bargaining agreement (CBA) terms. It imposes restrictions on strikes, particularly in essential services and public interest activities, demanding minimum workforce presence. Additionally, it regulates workplace assemblies to avoid a work disruption and revises the severance matrix and statutes for salespersons.
- Individual Employment Law: The decree seeks to clarify severance calculations, removes penalties for employment contract registration irregularities, and allows digital issuance of work certificates. It extends the probation period to eight months, facilitates individual agreement approval by the labour authority, introduces a 'bank' of the hour's compensation system, and sets guidelines for telework and discrimination cases.
This reform provoked much debate and the promotion of legal action to suspend its effects and assess its legitimacy.
One of the main contested aspects is that adopting such important measures should have taken place through the ordinary legislative procedure rather than using an emergency decree.