This project addresses the transformations of the employment regime that took place in Portugal in the context of global economic restructuring of the last decades and its onsequences in respect to employment and work. The deleterious impacts on work of the growing internationalization of production and concomitant financialisation have been salient in a country vulnerable to delocalization of production, macroeconomic imbalances and indebtedness. These impacts reached their zenith with the Global Financial Crisis and ensuing "troika" financial bail-out in 2011. At the time a reconfiguration of employment regime aimed at internal devaluation was spelled out in the troika's Memoradum and implemented, affecting institutions and rules governing employment protection, working time arrangements, unemployment benefits and collective bargaining. Building on previous research that characterized the institutional reconfiguration associated with internal devaluation as a regressive one that amounted to a transfer of income from labor to capital and to a change of power resources unfavorable to organized labor, the project intends to broaden this research in two different ways. First, it extends the assessment of devaluation of work to key dimensions of the quality of employment and working conditions that might have been directly deteriorated as a result of the reconfiguration of employment regime (in particular wages, working time and job security). Second, by analyzing actors' strategies and power resources at national, sector, and company level it pin points long term consequences of internal devaluation its drivers, and means to counteract them. The project conjectures that the institutional reconfiguration of the Portuguese employment regime and internal devaluation may have accelerated a process of cumulative devaluation of work involving loss of competences and skills, investment retrenchment, increasing inequalities, and demographic decay, whose relations and drivers ...

The collective bargaining and representativeness of temporary workers in Europe. Development and reinforcement of Industrial Relations Systems in response to changes in the European labour market This project was founded by the EC- DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and had CESOS srl Impresa Sociale as applicant and five other institutions, including DINÂMIA’CET-IUL, as co-applicants. The main objectives were to: analyse the adaptation of industrial relations systems to the challenges in the European labour market and their capacity to protect and represent new forms of labour; identify some best practices in the industrial relations systems and to identify examples of collective bargaining or significant agreements regarding temporary workers in Europe; develop expertise and knowledge on industrial relations systems in Europe, in particular regarding workers involved in the new forms of labour, which, very often, do not know the opportunities of representation and protection they could have; verify the knowledge regarding industrial relations systems and representativeness among the temporary workers in the countries involved; promote the exchange of best practices at European level and the identification of guidelines to develop a common strategy of industrial relations systems in Europe which can represent and protect temporary workers; verify the transferability of best practices in the various European Industrial Relations systems; disseminate and improve the knowledge of European temporary workers, social actors and experts regarding the industrial relations systems and the opportunities for temporary workers to be represented and protected.

This service includes the provision of a variety of information products covering the three areas of quality of work and employment, industrial relations and restructuring.This project includes the following tasks: reporting on relevant developments in the areas of Industrial Relations and Quality of Work and Employment through information updates; ERM restructuring records; Survey data reports relating to Quality of work and employment; Input to comparative analytical reports and thematic studies; Advice on communication opportunities.