Labour law – Official Blog of UNIO

Teresa Coelho Moreira (Associate Professor with Aggregation at the Law School of the University of Minho | Integrated member of JusGov )

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Nowadays there is an app for everything or almost everything, from simpler activities, such as food delivery, to more complex ones, such as providing legal services, with new digital platforms emerging every day. Indeed, in theory, any activity can be transformed into a task that can be performed through digital platforms and we witnessed this during the pandemic.

In view of this situation, one of the issues that assumes enormous importance is the qualification of the existing relationships between those who provide the activity in digital platforms, with numerous cases having been already ruled around the world.

Bearing this situation in mind, the importance of establishing presumptions increases. However, the presumption provided for in Article 12 of the Portuguese Labour Code, although positive, was envisaged for typical labour relations, for employment relations in the pre-digital era. Regarding the new ways of providing work, the work in digital platforms, it is necessary to recognize the inadequacy of the presumption of employment to face the emerging problems of the new ways of working through digital platforms. Factors such as, inter alia, the ownership of work equipment and instruments, the existence of a work schedule determined by the beneficiary of the activity and the payment of a certain remuneration, are classic signs of legal subordination, but they are hardly operational signs to address the new types of dependency resulting from the provision of services for a particular company, via platforms.

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 by Teresa Coelho Moreira, Professor of Labour Law, University of Minho

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The world is facing an unprecedented pandemic crisis with global effects and that already reached almost all countries in the world. This situation has reflected in all areas but we are going to analyse some aspects related with Labour Law, and what Portugal is doing to face this situation.

Recently on 23 March, the ILO issued a paper entitled ILO Standards and COVID-19 (coronavirus) and emphasized that the Employment and Decent Work for Peace and Resilience Recommendation, 2017 (No. 205) on the Preamble and Paragraphs 7, b and 43, establishes that “crisis responses need to ensure respect for all human rights and the rule of law, including respect for fundamental principles and rights at work and for international labour standards”.

Today, we are living a truly tsunami in terms of economic crisis with this virus and no one knows when and if it is going to stop and how the world is going to be. However, one thing is sure. We are going to face a huge economic crisis with reflection in the world of work. Millions of people around the world are going to be unemployed. According with the ILO we can have “a rise in global unemployment of between 5.3 million (“low” scenario) and 24.7 million (“high” scenario) from a base level of 188 million in 2019. By comparison, the 2008-9 global financial crisis increased global unemployment by 22 million”[i]. With this scenario, falls in employment also mean large income losses for workers that translate into falls in consumption of goods and services, in turn affecting the prospects for businesses and economies.
Continue reading “Portuguese Labour Law in times of Covid19: some aspects” →