Labor, Solidarity and Social Security Minister Ana Méndez Godinho said this Wednesday that companies that have already expressed interest in participating in the four-day week pilot experience are mainly in the service sector.
Ana Méndez Godinho spoke to reporters at the end of the Social Dialogue meeting where she presented the four-day workweek pilot project, a meeting attended by project coordinator Pedro Gomez, author of Friday a New Saturday.
“We have companies from different sectors [que manifestaram interesse em aderir]. The predominance of what we have received is the service sector,” the minister said, declining to say how many companies would be interested.
“Companies increasingly need to position themselves as companies that value new ways of organizing working hours and giving their employees the opportunity to combine personal and family life with work,” the minister stressed, believing that this is also a way to attract and retain talent.
The minister said she believes “there are many companies willing” to join the four-day workweek pilot, noting that the initiative is “completely voluntary and reversible.”
Pilot projects will be launched in 2023, and each company will be able to modulate itself according to its characteristics, “always subject to the rule of reducing the total monthly working hours and voluntary joining by workers,” he said. Ana Mendes Godinho.
The minister also mentioned that, at the request of the UGT and CGTU trade unions, the government considers it important to ensure “very close supervision by trade union representatives” in pilot experiments.
On the part of the social partners, the central unions have expressed their readiness to discuss the four-day week, but argue that this measure cannot lead to loss of wages or an increase in the daily workload.
The employers’ confederations, on the other hand, felt that now was not the time to discuss the issue, arguing that priority should be given to measures yet to be implemented in the income and productivity agreement signed a few weeks ago at the Social Dialogue.
The government presented this Wednesday and at the Social Dialogue a four-day working week pilot project, which should start in June 2023 in private sector companies and can then be extended to public administration.
According to the government document, the pilot experience in 2023 will be open to all private sector companies and will last for six months, being voluntary and reversible and without financial compensation, providing the state with technical and administrative support to support the transition.
According to the manager, this experience “cannot entail a reduction in wages and must imply a reduction in working hours.”
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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