A growing body of comparative political economy literature argues that western countries are increasingly dualised. According to this strand, the gap between workers is expanding. Some workers are covered by collective agreements, have standard contracts and have access to standard social protection, while others hold atypical contracts, have access to a second-tier welfare state and are not covered by collective agreements. This dualisation process results from labour legislation reforms that allowed the spread of atypical contracts; welfare state reforms, that allowed the creation of residual, income-tested, and in-work benefits for some individuals; and collective bargaining reforms that eroded collective bargaining coverage. The covid-19 pandemic has made even clearer the need to rethink these divisions, which are characterised by the existence of winners and losers. The guiding question of this project is: under which conditions can dualisation be overcome and solidarity fostered? The project focusses on one key dimension of dualisation: the regulation and use of atypical contracts, i.e. fixed-term contracts, self-employment and agency work. From our perspective, the type of contract is a key element of dualisation, and is of paramount importance to explain labour market inequalities and the disintegration of solidarity in the sphere of work. Thus, when speaking about reforms that foster solidarity, we mean inclusive reforms that improve the protection provided by atypical contracts. The main argument of the project is that fostering solidarity involves three levels of action: labour law (national), collective bargaining (meso and micro) and workplace-level arrangements (micro). Labour law plays a decisive role in establishing the conditions under which atypical contracts can be used. Collective agreements are important because they can define better (or worse) conditions than those established in the labour code regarding the use of atypical contracts. And it ...

The project’s goal is to conduct research on the professional identities and discourses of school teachers in Portugal. It seeks to research how the identities and discourses of teachers and their associations are remolded as a result of changes in the context of public educational systems.

This is a proposal to study the forms of collaboration and resistence of civil servants and their unions to the organizational changes with the Reform of the Portuguese Public Administration. This involves measures with the goals of improving the productivity and efficiency of public employment. As in other European countries with excessive public deficits, the aim is to contain employment and wage costs in the civil service. Changes within employment relations and personnel management are being applied with the same goal as a basis of a strategy of ?debureaucratization?. It is necessary to research the role of workers and their unions in the Reform of Public Administration due to the paradox envolved with the goal of reducing state expenditure in the context of growing demand for public services: how to downsize and improve productivity and quality without discouraging human resources?

This is a proposal to research the adaptation of the Portuguse trade union system to socio-eeconomic change. The Portuguese union system is a composite of interdependent union organizations and coalitions situated within the diverse institutions of industrial relations.