{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0255598033861278, 'fraction_numerical': 0.02643364281813217, 'mean_word_length': 5.203252032520325, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 1, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Collective Bargaining During the Crisis: The Portuguese Case

Following a period of significant development at the end of the 1990s, with economic growth rates greater than those of the European Union, the Portuguese economy stagnated in 2002 and even declined in 2003. The current context of international crisis has just interrupted the fragile growth trend initiated in 2004: In fact, real GDP, which increased by 1.9 percent in 2007, had a growth rate of zero in 2008 and declined by 2.9 percent in 2009. The crisis has abruptly increased the closure of companies and unemployment jumped from 7.3% in the second haft of 2008 to 10.1% in the forth quarter of 2009. Notwithstanding, social dialog was resilient to this situation of economic crisis, as shown by the number of collective agreements negotiated by the social partners, the number of workers covered by collective agreements and the observed increase in real wages. Additionally, social partners have agreed on a reform of the Labour Code. Are this data enough evidence of social concentration on crisis management? This paper will analyze this issue, giving particular attention to collective bargaining in Portugal and the crisis impact on the industrial relations system and their actors.


Introduction
The beginning of the international financial and economic crisis coincided in Portugal with the final phase of a government that was characterized by promoting a series of reforms in public administration, social security and protection policies, education and training system and regulation of the labour market. Since many of these reforms touched some groups usually considered as privileged in the Portuguese employment context, they were strongly opposed by the affected professional groups, under the leadership of trade unions, particularly the most representative trade union confederation (CGTP). The government also promoted public deficit consolidation, considered as necessary to allow the recovery of sustained economic growth based on increased exports and investment.
The analysis of the evolution of the Portuguese GDP since the 1990s, when compared with the EU average, illustrates the difficulties that the country has faced in terms of growth, wealth and competitiveness. Following the entry of Portugal into the EU (in 1986), the Portuguese economy went through a period of reasonable growth with growth rates above those of the EU. But since 2000, the economic situation worsened significantly and growth rates of GDP fell into negative territory in 2003, improving only moderately from then until 2007. As shown in Figure 1, with the crisis, the growth comes back to a negative value and the forecasted growth rates for 2010 and 2011 continue below the EU levels.  UE-27, 1995-2011. Source: Eurostat and European Commission, Economic Forecasts, Spring 2010(2010, 2011. The low performance of the Portuguese economy in the last decade had as a consequence the introduction of a new period of strong divergence from the EU and the OECD levels of GDP per capita (see Figure 2), after a limited period of convergence initiated in the first half of the 1980s. This behaviour of the economy and the recent financial and economic crisis strongly deteriorated the situation in the Portuguese labour market (see Table 1), inducing losses of both the active population (-0.85) and employment (-2.8%). The unemployment rate has been lower than the EU average in last decades, but it rose after 2006 to values above the EU, from about 4% in 2000 to around 11% in mid-2010 (see Figure 3).  Table 1 Active Population, Employment and Unemployment (Seasonally Adjusted Data)   2007 2008 2009  2008  2009  2010   I  II  III  IV  I  II  III  IV  I  II Active population, growth rate (%) 0.6 0.   Table 2). Hiring and firing practices are particularly relevant in this context and the country occupies almost the last position (rank 129th), confirming strong rigidities in the labour market pointed out by several international institutions. Firing costs, flexibility of wage determination, rigidity of employment and cooperation in labour-employer relations constitute other items with a strong negative position in Portugal.
How did the crisis impact on the industrial relations system and their actors? What are the results of recent macroeconomic developments on the centralized social dialogue, and more specifically, on the sectoral and enterprise collective bargaining? Will these constraints press a concerted negotiation to fight against the crisis, bringing the main trade union confederation to a first commitment with macroeconomic policies?

Public Responses to the Crisis and the Reactions of Social Actors
Like in other countries, the Portuguese government responded to the crisis by taking specific measures to strengthen the financial system, regulate the financing of economic activity and protect savings. Later, under the Plan of Economic Recovery approved by the European Council in early December 2008, the so-called "initiative for investment and employment" was created which, according to the official assessment, represented an additional stimulus to the economy of 2,180 million Euros.
The "investment and employment initiative" was organized around five structural axes: (1)

The Impact of the Crisis in Sectoral Collective Bargaining
Despite the unfavourable economic climate, collective bargaining has seen a significant momentum in 2008.    increases below the EU-27 average, like most countries in southern Europe but also Denmark and Germany (see Figure 6).
An accurate assessment of the impact of the crisis on the negotiated non-wage items is difficult to obtain because there is no systematic treatment of the contents of the Conventions. However, a recent study designed to assess the innovations in collective bargaining since 2006, involving 14 subjects directly related to the adaptability-internal or external-of industrial relations or related to trade unions rights, concludes that there has been some innovations regarding the issues under negotiation, but the frequency of this innovation is relatively low (Dornelas, Ministro, Lopes, Albuquerque, Paixão, & Santos, 2010). Specifically, there are no issues such as teleworking and there are few collective agreements that regulate the functional versatility, the temporary assignment of employees, closure and temporary reduction of activity due to a reason concerning the employer, cessation of work contract, concentration of working time and minimum services in case of strike. The themes present in most collective agreements are: adaptability of working time, trade union representation in the company, corporate relocation of the employee, transfer of the workplace, social protection and supplementary training (Dornelas et al., 2010, pp. 8-9).

Final Remarks
The institutionalization of a system of cooperation between unions and employers' organizations is a recent phenomenon in Portugal. In fact, the Permanent Council for Social Dialogue, a body created specifically for the promotion of social dialogue, had a late appearance only in the 1980s. Among the initial concerns were the constraints imposed by a fragile economy and the Portuguese integration into the EEC (Natali & Pochet, 2009;Cerdeira, 2004). Nevertheless, social dialogue has been reasonably dynamic, both by the quantity and also the quality of topics discussed and agreements negotiated.
Over the 26 years of its existence the social actors reached 19 agreements, of which 17 are tripartite 2 bipartite.
The main strategic agreements were the Economic and Social Agreement (1990), the Agreement on Short-term Social Dialogue (1996), the Agreement on Strategic Consultation 1996Consultation -1999Consultation (1997 (2006) and Agreement on the Reform of Vocational Training.
At present, the government seeks a compromise around a "Pact for Employment" that is part of its "Government Program" and is defined as an instrument for the maintenance and creation of employment and for a new social consensus in response to the present conjuncture.
However, the Portuguese Confederation of Commerce, one of the four employers' confederations represented in the Permanent Council for Social Dialogue, has already announced that, although continuing to participate in social dialogue, there will not be available to sign any agreement. This until the government cancels the intention of allowing the elongation of the opening hours of the hypermarkets on Sunday, after 12 h. For its part, the CGTP, given the government's intention to remove from July 1 additional social supports created under the "2009 Initiative" to address the crisis, called for protests, strikes and plenary meetings of protest, accusing the Government of "wanting to discuss proposals for employment while advancing with measures of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) that threatens to worsen the unemployment" (RTP News, August 1, 2010).
This behaviour of the social actors illustrates the difficulty of tripartite concentration in Portugal and it casts some doubts on the possibility of obtaining consensus solutions for the present crisis.