The Recovery and Resilience Plan presented by the Portuguese Government to the European Commission, in line with the principles established in the European Pillar of Social Rights, reaffirms the importance of promoting the creation of permanent jobs and reducing excessive segmentation in the labor market.
The Recovery and Resilience Plan responds to the priority of employment and the reduction of labour segmentation by promoting a dynamic and competitive productive fabric, valuing the skills and qualifications of workers, an appropriate regulatory framework, but also, more directly, through the reform on the agenda for the promotion of decent work, included in the component C6 - Qualifications and Skills, through which it is intended to promote collective bargaining, the enhancement of training and qualification and the defense of adequate wages and decent incomes, ensured in the framework of social dialogue and consultation on which the practice of labor policy is based in Portugal.
This reform is supported by an investment in support for the creation of sustainable jobs which, at the end of the crisis, will provide a framework of stability and security for new employment relationships, encouraging open-ended contracts and, in particular, the hiring of young people and the establishment of appropriate wage levels. This investment is embodied in the creation of the Sustainable Employment Commitment, which this decree-law creates and regulates.
The Compromisso Emprego Sustentável (Sustainable Employment Commitment) is an exceptional and transitory measure, consisting of an incentive to the hiring without term of the unemployed registered in the Instituto do Emprego e da Formação Profissional, I.P., based on the combination of financial support for hiring and financial support for the payment of social security contributions, support that can be accumulated with employment incentive measures of a fiscal or para-fiscal nature.
In addition to reinforcing the incentives to create permanent jobs, the measure responds to other structural challenges of the Portuguese labour market, namely the need to promote youth employment and to stimulate a general improvement in wages. Thus, a series of increases in the financial support for hiring are provided for, to be applied whenever in question are the hiring of young people up to the age of 35, the hiring of people with disabilities, the signing of contracts with basic pay equal to or greater than twice the national minimum wage, jobs located in inland areas and also the hiring of people of the under-represented sex in the profession.
