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Costa, A. (2025). The politics of labour market deregulation in a context of “polycrises”: the Portuguese case. 27th Annual Conference of the Association of Heterodox Economics (AHE).

A. C. Costa,  "The politics of labour market deregulation in a context of “polycrises”: the Portuguese case", in 27th Annu. Conf. of the Association of Heterodox Economics (AHE), Londres, 2025

@misc{costa2025_1775152705806,
	author = "Costa, A.",
	title = "The politics of labour market deregulation in a context of “polycrises”: the Portuguese case",
	year = "2025",
	howpublished = "Digital",
	url = "https://hetecon.net/2024/12/17/ahe-2025-conference-call-for-papers/"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - The politics of labour market deregulation in a context of “polycrises”: the Portuguese case
T2  - 27th Annual Conference of the Association of Heterodox Economics (AHE)
AU  - Costa, A.
PY  - 2025
CY  - Londres
UR  - https://hetecon.net/2024/12/17/ahe-2025-conference-call-for-papers/
AB  - The memorandum of understanding signed with the Troika, in May 2011,
amidst the eurozone debt crisis, relied on a combination of austerity policies and
an internal devaluation strategy that produced severe and long-lasting effects on
the Portuguese economy. These effects range from the depletion of the capital
stock to the erosion of trade union bargaining power, the increase of labor market
vulnerabilities, the deepening of inequalities, an overspecialization on low-skill and
low-wage activities, such as tourism, or the degradation of public services. Despite
a trajectory of economic recovery, since 2014 and until the Covid-19 pandemic,
continuing in the current context, the austerity policies were only partially reversed
- ‘core measures’ of labour market deregulation, such as dismissal procedures and
collective bargaining decentralization, persisted. By focusing on the Portuguese
case, this presentation attempts to address the debate on the crucial role of arenas
of decision-making (social concertation versus national parliament, and the EU
versus the national level) in ongoing processes of reconfiguration of the wage
relation.
The main hypothesis underlying this presentation is that the social
concertation arena and the support of EU institutions are very important in
reversing ‘corollary measures’, such as those on temporary employment and
minimum wages, aiming to protect nonstandard workers on the labour market, but
this was often done at the expense of decreasing levels of regulation for the
‘industrial core’ workers, much in line with an orientation towards export-led
growth.
In synthesis, it was under this complex socioeconomic fabric and politics that
the impact of those multiple and successive crises, since the Global Financial crisis,
has to be appraised.
ER  -