Working time is a central and conflictual issue of the employment relations, with the unions aiming to reduce it and the employers emphasizing the need for their flexibility In the last decades a deep reorganization of working time has been observed. It has been regulated according to several models that articulate collective bargaining, state intervention and social concertation processes. In the Portuguese public administration, the employment relations changed profoundly. First, under the impetus of the New Public Management; subsequently in the context of the crisis and the intervention of the Troika. In this sector, working conditions have traditionally been defined by legislation, in line with the existing type of contracts. With the approximation of the labour regime to that of the private sector, the right to collective bargaining was granted by law in 2004, but only to workers with the new contract of employment in public functions. However, both this law and another one of 2008 imposed some specificities, in particular restricting the subjects that can be negotiated. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the main trends in working time regulation that emerge from collective bargaining in this sector. It is based on a documentary analysis of the collective agreements published between 2009 and 2015, as well as other documents. Some relevant conclusions will be drawn, regarding the regulatory standards. The unilateral policy pursued by the previous right-wing government from 2013 till 2015 will also be highlighted. After imposing the 40 hours of work a week by law, it refused to approve a several hundred freely negotiated conventions that maintained the maximum working week in 35 hours. At the end of its term, that government admitted that possibility in exchange for the unions' acceptance of the adaptability of working time. Only eleven conventions were signed within this framework.

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Working time,public administration,troika,collective bargaining,unilateralism