STOLEROFF, Alan; PEREIRA, Irina.

Teachers Unions and the transformation of employment relations

in public education in Portugal. Transfer – European Review of Labour and Research,
ETUI-IRES, v. 14, n. 2, 2008, p. 313-331. Disponível em: <http://trs.sagepub.com/content/14/2
/313.full.pdf+html>. Acesso em: 12 jun. 2013.

Teachers’ unions and the transformation of

employment relations
in public education in Portugal1
Alan Stoleroff* and Irina Pereira**

E Summary
This article examines the ongoing transformation of employment relations within the
Portuguese public education sector as it affects teachers. It focuses on the negotiation
over the amendment of the Teachers’ Career Statute, initiated in May 2006, and the
subsequent phases of its implementation, highlighting the recent conflict over the
application of the performance evaluation system and performance-related pay. It
analyses the positions of the teachers’ unions and the conflicts that have emerged
within the education sector, as well as the interaction of these conflicts with those of
the public sector unions with regard to the overall reform of public administration.
The significant resistance of teachers and the unified position of their unions in
opposition to the reform measures have produced a particular dynamic in their
conflict with the government.

❖❖❖

F Sommaire
Cet article examine la transformation que subissent actuellement les relations de
travail au sein du secteur de l’éducation publique au Portugal, se penche plus
particulièrement sur son impact sur les enseignants. Il se concentre sur les négociations
relatives à la réforme du statut professionnel des enseignants, initiée en mai 2006, et
les phases subséquentes de sa mise en œuvre, en soulignant le récent conflit sur
l’application du système d’évaluation des performances et de rémunération en
fonction des prestations. Il analyse les positions des syndicats d’enseignants et les
conflits qui ont éclaté au sein du secteur de l’éducation, ainsi que l’interaction de ces
conflits avec ceux du secteur public quant à la réforme globale de l’administration
publique. La ferme résistance des enseignants et la position unifiée de leurs syndicats

1 The research for this paper was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the project
‘Relações do emprego e mudança organizacional nas reformas na Administração Pública em Portugal: o
papel dos sindicatos e dos trabalhadores’.
* Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa – Av. das Forças Armadas – 1649-026 Lisbon,
Portugal
** Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia – Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa
– Av. das Forças Armadas – 1649-026 Lisbon, Portugal

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Alan Stoleroff and Irina Pereira

dans l’opposition aux mesures de réforme ont généré une dynamique particulière
dans leur conflit avec le gouvernement.

❖❖❖

D Zusammenfassung
Dieser Beitrag analysiert die aktuellen Veränderungen in den Beschäftigungsbezie-
hungen im öffentlichen Bildungswesen Portugals hinsichtlich ihrer Auswirkungen auf
die Lehrkräfte. Die Autoren befassen sich mit den Verhandlungen zur Änderung der
Laufbahnordnung der Lehrkräfte, die im Mai 2006 eingeleitet wurden, sowie mit den
darauf folgenden Durchführungsphasen der neuen Ordnung. In diesem Zusammenhang
wird der jüngste Konflikt über die Anwendung des Leistungsbewertungsverfahrens und
des leistungsbezogenen Vergütungssystems beschrieben. Der Beitrag untersucht die
Positionen der Lehrergewerkschaften und die Konflikte, die im Bildungswesen
entstanden sind, sowie ihre Interaktion mit Konflikten mit den Gewerkschaften des
öffentlichen Dienstes im Zusammenhang mit der allgemeinen Reform der öffentlichen
Verwaltung. Durch den Widerstand der Lehrer und die geschlossene ablehnende
Haltung ihrer Gewerkschaften gegenüber den Reformmaßnahmen hat sich eine
besondere Dynamik in ihrem Streit mit der Regierung entwickelt.

❖❖❖

Keywords: public sector trade unions, teachers’ unions, public sector reform, social
dialogue

Since 2002, three successive Portuguese governments have been involved in a reform
of public administration. These governments have incrementally sought to reduce
spending, focusing on organisational rationalisation through the elimination of redun-
dant services, employee mobility, reduction of labour costs through containment and
freezing of salaries and promotions, and reduction of employment through attrition.
Since its inception in 2005 Portugal’s present Socialist Party (PS) government has sig-
nificantly advanced this reform through negotiation and comprehensive legislation
(Stoleroff and Pereira 2007; Stoleroff 2007). For the most part this reform has been
conceived within a fairly uncritical version of the paradigm of ‘New Public Management’
(NPM) (OECD 1995; Gomes 2001; Gruening 2001; Bach and Kessler 2007a and b)
applying organisational strategies of relative deregulation and decentralisation as well
as the human resource principles of individualisation in performance measurement and
career development.

Nevertheless, the reform has been driven as much by urgent cost-cutting objectives due
to Portugal’s public deficit crisis as by ideological commitment to NPM. The absolute
majority obtained by the Socialist Party in the parliamentary elections of 2005 and the

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risks posed by the deficit crisis to Portugal’s integration in European Monetary Union
(EMU) have provided thrust and a sense of emergency to the government’s behaviour
while a decisive neoliberal shift in the ideological make-up of the Socialist Party leader-
ship has oriented state reform along the lines of the new ‘managerialism’ (Clarke and
Newman 1997; Clarke et al. 2000). The result of this combination of circumstances has
lent a certain radicalism to the government’s reform project, leading it to attempt to
produce a ‘revolution’ in the model and culture of the Portuguese public administration
within the four years of its mandate.2

Up to now the reform has progressed along several fronts applying to the various sec-
tors of central public administration: reorganisation and rationalisation of the state
apparatus, rationalisation of human resources and transformation of public administra-
tion employment relations with the objective of achieving the flexibility compatible with
such organisational and human resource goals. The basic measures of the general
reform have encompassed the restructuring of services and organisations (PRACE),
employee transfer and mobility from obsolete or redundant jobs or services to either
the pool of reserve employees or dismissal (Mobilidade Especial), the restriction of the
traditional civil service status to categories serving the ‘sovereign functions of the state’
and the conversion of the employment bond of other public servants to that of a generic
employment contract, the reduction and uniformisation of careers across the public
administration, and the introduction of systematic individualised performance assess-
ment as the basis for careers and promotion (SIADAP). The general reform is applied
with specific features in the various special areas of public employment such as educa-
tion and health. While the government’s programme for restructuring the National
Health Service has involved a complex but tentative rationalisation of the network of
health service provision and organisational restructuring through privatisation and
outsourcing of hospital management,3 within the sphere of public education a relatively
coherent programme of measures has been introduced ranging from changes in school
personnel and organisational management to new modes of professional control
through the application of human resource management to teachers.

Teachers’ employment and careers in Portugal are regulated by a specific professional

statute, the Teachers’ Career Statute (Estatuto da Carreira Docente, ECD), which falls
within the purview of legislation.4 The general reform measures referred to above
apply to teachers’ employment where they are relevant but there are particularities to
the transformation of teachers’ employment relations which involve changes in the
ECD, as well as specific norms in the application of individual performance evalua-
tion. Furthermore, measures introduced in the realm of school administration and

2 The metaphor of ‘revolution’ for the reform was first used by then prime minister Durão Barroso in the
midst of his government’s initial reform efforts in 2002 and has been used frequently ever since, thereby
indicating just how radical a change is intended.
3 At the time of writing the government has modified its approach to the outsourcing of hospital manage-
ment to private entities.
4 The process of legislation nevertheless necessarily involves negotiation of the revision of the Statute with
the teachers’ unions.

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educational policy in the perennial quest to improve Portugal’s significant deficits in

training and student success rates have focused upon teachers’ performance and there-
fore have had significant consequences for their jobs and employment relations.
Finally, teachers’ roles within the schools will be further influenced by the implemen-
tation of a new decentralised public school management model. The reactions of
teachers and teachers’ unions to these changes have further shaped the conflicts
emerging from the reform and have produced a specific conflict dynamic in the rela-
tions between the teachers’ unions and the government. Indeed, a knotty web of con-
flict has arisen from this multifaceted confrontation of the government’s general and
sectoral reformist goals with the teachers’ unions’ defence of professional interests.

This article describes and analyses the ongoing transformation of employment relations
within public education, the positions of the teachers’ unions and the meanders of con-
flict that have emerged within the sector of education, as well as the interaction of these
conflicts with the conflicts of the public sector unions in the context of the reform of
the public administration.

Organisational and policy contexts of the transformation

of employment relations in public education

The present reforms within public education have been conceived within the context of
the general reform of public administration and it is symptomatic of the present reform
as a whole that it is being carried out in the context of the deficit crisis. Thus, there is
conformity of the goals of the reforms in education (the improvement of Portugal’s skill
pool to face the ‘information society’) with the general orientations of the reform of
public administration (the reduction of expenditure through downsizing and structural
rationalisation).

The Ministry of Education (ME) employed a total of 205 437 workers in 2005, which
amounts to 28% of total employment in the public administration as a whole.
Education is located within the central state sector (which itself accounts for 77% of
total public sector employment within the public administration), where it accounts for
35.7% of employment (followed by Health at 19.7%, Defence at 8.7% and Internal
Affairs 9.4%).

The occupational structure of the ME is relatively simple, divided between administra-

tive workers and teachers (from the various levels of education). Pre-school teachers
and elementary and secondary teachers (with civil service status) made up a total of
138 548 teachers in 2005 and administrative staff (with civil service status) made up
36 571 workers, 67% and 18% respectively of total employment in this Ministry. The
remainder is made up of teachers, administrative employees and auxiliary personnel
with non-civil service contracts or temporary hires.

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The Ministry of Education is therefore the largest employer of the state, and absorbs
the fourth greatest portion of state expenditure. It is often pejoratively referred to as
the ‘monster’. Moreover, teachers’ salaries constitute the largest and increasing por-
tion of the expenditure of the ME. Data also indicate that spending upon teachers’
salaries in Portugal is well above the average for the countries of the EU-25 (Pereira
and Moreira 2007). In this respect various reports and analyses from international
organisations have produced unflattering portraits of Portugal’s scoring on scales of
educational performance (teaching outputs) and in particular of the efficiency of the
Portuguese public school system.5 These reports advocate a more rational manage-
ment of educational resources and public investment in education, and recommend
structural reforms and the introduction of incentives and competition schemes for this
sector. In the context of the Portuguese deficit crisis, such indicators of the poor effi-
ciency of the labour costs of the public education system became a justification for
urgent government action.

The cost-cutting goals of the general public services reform have also oriented the
rationalisation efforts of the Ministry of Education through the closing of schools in
line with the decrease in school age population, the extension of working hours for
teachers, increases in class size, increased hurdles for entry into the teaching career, the
increase (as for all public servants) of retirement age from 60 to 65, the ‘two by one’
rule (one entrant for two leavers), limitations upon the number of teachers who can
reach the highest pay grades, the end of automatic promotions based upon seniority,
transfer of underemployed teachers out of the sector, and the control of employment
through central control of annual vacancies for teaching posts.

The cost-cutting bias in this reform coincides with the application in Portuguese educa-
tional policy of some formulas of ‘New Public Management’6 with regard to improving
educational performance by raising the skills of the Portuguese population and work-
force and improving the efficiency of educational resources. Accordingly, in 2005, the
PS government defined its policy for reform in this sector highlighting structural change
in the educational system and the development of new conceptions for the organisation
of educational resources, and reorganisation of school management through rationali-
sation of equipment, devolution and autonomy through contracts between schools and
the educational administration, evaluation of schools and teachers, new forms of
recruitment, and involvement of new actors in school management.7

5 See, e.g. Economic Survey 2003, pp. 81-85; European Commission, The Portuguese Economy after the
boom, Occasional Papers, 2004, pp. 4, 26.
6 These presume that public schools can be managed as private organisations, that public teachers can be
managed as ‘normal’ workers, and that teaching activity should be controlled and measured. With regard
to the development of a new management paradigm for this sector, see Fusarelli and Johnson (2004) and
Cibulka (1997). With regard to inadequacies and ‘dysfunctions’ of NPM formulas in this sector, see
Ballou and Podgursky (1993).
7 See ‘Cap.II/I. More and Better Education: challenges for schools and teachers’, Programme of the XVII
Constitutional Government, Portugal.

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The revision of the Teachers’ Career Statute (ECD) in

the context of the reform of public service employment

Public school teachers have been a category of public servants whose employment rela-
tions are framed by legislative codes regulating the public service as a whole, and at the
same time a special professional category within the public service, whose careers are
specifically regulated by the Teachers’ Career Statute (ECD). The changes in teachers’
employment relations are situated at the junction of two major structural reforms
under way in Portugal: the reform of public administration carried out under the guid-
ance of the Finance Ministry and that of the public educational system by the Ministry
of Education. Therefore, the measures of the generalised reform of the public admin-
istration extend to teachers’ careers, although in several aspects in accordance with
specific legislative and executive measures. Their employment status as public servants
will also be subject to the conversion, which has been achieved through legislation
within the context of the broader reform of public administration, of their civil service
status (função pública) to a bond based on an employment contract for public service
(contrato de trabalho em funções públicas) just as for other categories of public servants
(with the exception of those belonging to the ‘sovereign functions of the state’).8 There
are further implications of the reform for mobility and transfer in the cases of redun-
dant teachers, although, at the time of writing, the application of this measure has not
been fully regulated. Upon closer examination, the changes in teachers’ employment
relations entail, on the one hand, changes at a centralised level involving their relation-
ship to the Ministry of Education as employer and resulting from the revision of their
career statute, the ECD. For example, teachers are to be subject as are other public
servants to the application of individual performance evaluation and its effects for pro-
motion through the various grades of the pay scale, however, as a special corps, the
evaluation procedures and criteria are regulated by specific legislation and ministerially
defined measures. On the other hand, there are changes at the decentralised level of
the schools where the teachers’ work roles are directly formed in a hierarchical rela-
tionship as a consequence of changes in the model of school management. This article
focuses on the first axis, although we will take into account the challenges of the new
management model of public schools.

In May 2006 the Ministry of Education submitted a first version of its proposal for the
revision of the ECD to the unions. It proposed basic changes involving provisional
entry into the teaching career and career development through individual evaluation,
work time and work organisation, rules for absenteeism and the adjustment of the
retirement age. These changes were deemed necessary to increase professionalism

8 The areas of public service encompassed by the designation of ‘sovereign functions of the state’ are
Defence, External Representation (diplomatic corps), Police, Criminal Investigation, Direct
Administration of Justice (magistrates, judges). Around 80% of public servants will change from the
previous ‘civil servant status’ to the new contract. According to our calculation from the Base de Dados
dos Recursos Humanos da Administração Pública of 2005, teachers with civil service status make up
approximately 29% of the total of public servants.

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 Teachers’ unions and the transformation of employment relations in public education in Portugal

amongst teachers, to promote evaluation of performance and to compensate merit, to

improve the quality of education and to combat dropping-out. The most contentious
changes that were proposed are summarised below.

1) The introduction of a new hierarchy within the teaching career and a hierarchisation of
tasks and responsibilities

This entails a new distinction between two hierarchical professional categories, that of
the regular teacher (Professor) and senior ‘entitled’ teacher (Professor Titular). As in the
general system of performance evaluation that has been introduced in the public serv-
ice, the new ECD established quotas for each positive grading category to be applied
in each school and only those teachers obtaining the grade of ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ may
qualify for the selection process for senior teacher. Only one-third of a school’s teach-
ing staff may obtain the category of senior teacher.

2) The end of automatic promotion through pay scales based solely upon seniority and
individual performance evaluation of public servants (SIADAP)

The reform simultaneously introduces factors of merit in pay determination, quotas

and bonuses for superior performance. Individual performance evaluation in accord-
ance with the criteria of the SIADAP also applies to the passage from trial to effective
status for new entrants and to renewals of contracts. Beyond this, the new ECD intro-
duces penalties in terms of advancement for grades of sufficient or insufficient in per-
formance evaluation. Such grades imply obligatory retraining and can result in regu-
lated forms of dismissal.

3) A new process of entry into a public teaching career

Besides a formal higher education diploma, qualification for the selection process
requires passage of a Ministry of Education applied examination: candidates must pass
two exams and attain a score of not less than 14 (out of 20) in both of them. Candidates
who do not pass are subsequently excluded from access to a teaching career (at least in
the public sector). The new ECD also introduces a one-year trial period following
recruitment and in order to gain effective employment it is necessary for newly
recruited teachers to obtain a grade of ‘good’ or more during the probationary period
following hiring.

Evolution of conflicts and negotiations between

teachers’ unions and the Ministry of Education

The measures of the reform of public administration have necessarily been subject to
negotiation with the unions of public servants. However, this process of negotiation has
been replete with conflict. From their public declarations, as well as our interviews with

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Alan Stoleroff and Irina Pereira

union leaders, we can confirm that the unions share almost unanimously the perception
that they have been excluded from participation in the conception of the reform. They
perceive the reform as being imposed upon them and against their interests by the
government which has not carried out dialogue or negotiated with them in a meaning-
ful way. All three of the recognised public service union actors that have been present
in negotiations as interlocutors with the government (FC, STE and FESAP) have been
involved in conflict. If concessions to parts of the reform have been made by certain
unions (as in the case of the agreement on the evaluation system by FESAP, and the
agreement on the regulation of careers and contracts by FESAP and STE), those who
conceded explain their action as a tactic through which they seek to mitigate the dam-
age that would derive from the unilateral imposition of the new rules.

In previous analyses (Stoleroff and Pereira 2007; Stoleroff 2007), we have posited vari-
ous explanations for the degree of conflict involved in this process: 1) the coincidence
of the reform with the public deficit crisis that has led to an intransigent policy of aus-
terity and a posture of cost-cutting urgency on the part of the government; 2) the tech-
nocratic, social engineering approach of the government to the conception of the
reform which led to the appointment of expert commissions, from which union voices
were generally excluded, to elaborate reform schemes, thereby ensuring that the unions
would feel marginalised from the phase of conception and that policies that they
oppose would appear to have been imposed; 3) the shock of the contrast of the previ-
ously institutionalised public and civil service model with the new employment relations
model which significantly reduces the protection and security of employees; 4) the
overlapping of collective bargaining with the negotiation of reform measures and the
government’s inflexibility in public sector collective bargaining wage rounds over sev-
eral years which has reduced the scope for potential trade-offs for union concessions
around reform measures; 5) the political aims and ‘maximalism’ of certain union strat-
egies as well as the use of adversarial and mobilising tactics in defence of the existing
model of employment relations.

The conflict between the Ministry of Education and the teachers’ unions has been even
more intense than within the public administration as a whole, both with regard to the
entrenchment of opposing positions on both sides as well as with regard to the continu-
ity of conflict and mobilisation.

Like trade unionism in public service in general, the structure of unions in Portuguese
public education is particularly complex and fragmented along political-ideological and
regional demarcations as well as categorical lines (Stoleroff 2000, 2005). In the first
place there is a distinction between unions of teachers and unions of administrative and
auxiliary staff in the schools. Even within the cohort of teachers’ unions there is a vari-
ety of types of unions. The largest part are regional general unions of teachers but there
are various more restrictive and exclusive unions that demarcate their constituencies on
the basis of origin of degree of qualification (that is, on the basis of whether their cre-
dentials were obtained from a Polytechnic or a University) or according to the teaching
level (pre-school, elementary, secondary). Secondly, the political-ideological division

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 Teachers’ unions and the transformation of employment relations in public education in Portugal

between unions adhering to the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers

(CGTP) or the General Union of Workers (UGT) is present amongst the general
teachers’ unions. In addition there are another ten ‘independent’ unions.

The ideological-political division of the public sector unions between the class-struggle
oriented CGTP and concertation-oriented UGT should have special relevance in the
public sector where the employer is also the state. It could be expected that due to party
ties the more generally Socialist composition of the UGT leadership would lead to
affinity or collusion with the PS government and that the generally Communist and
left-wing leadership (including Socialists) of the CGTP would lead to consistent opposi-
tion to the PS government’s reforms. Accounts of the conflicts over the public admin-
istration reform (see Stoleroff 2007) as well as this account demonstrate, however, that
these relationships are not entirely linear in contemporary Portugal.

With a density rate of some 68% in 2006,9 teachers are highly unionised even when com-
pared with the rest of the public sector (approximately 45%) and more so when com-
pared with unionisation in Portugal in general (approximately 20%). While the public
sector is the bastion of Portuguese trade unionism, public education can be considered
as the bastion of trade unionism in the public sector. The largest unions amongst teachers
are those of FENPROF-CGTP (which account for 46% of unionised teachers).

In contrast with the general public service union movement, from the start of the proc-
ess the teachers’ unions shared a basic and fundamental opposition to the philosophy of
the revision of the ECD. The teachers’ unions were indeed relatively satisfied with the
existing Statute which had been renegotiated in 1998 during the mandate of the previous
PS government of António Guterres. In the context of the reforms already in motion
and in anticipation of struggle over the revision of the ECD, the panoply of normally
divided teachers’ unions united in an effective coalition for the first time since 1974 in
one Platform of Teachers’ Unions (Plataforma Sindical dos Professores, see Table 1).

Figure 1: Composition of the Platform of Teachers’ Unions: Confederations and Unions

CGTP FENPROF (7 unions): Federação Nacional dos Professores
UGT FNE (7 unions): Federação Nacional dos Sindicatos da Educação
FEPECI (1 union): Federação Portuguesa dos Profissionais da Educação, Ensino, Cultura e
Investigação
FNEI (2 unions): Federação Nacional de Ensino e Investigação
IND. ASPL: Associação Sindical de Professores Licenciados; PRÓ-ORDEM: Associação Sindical
dos Professores Pró-Ordem; SEPLEU: Sindicato dos Educadores e Professores Licenciados
pelas Escolas Superiores de Educação e Universidades; SIPE: Sindicato Independente dos
Professores e Educadores; SIPPEB: Sindicato dos Professores do Pré-Escolar e do Ensino
Básico; SNPES: Sindicato Nacional dos Professores do Ensino Secundário; SNPL: Sindicato
Nacional dos Professores Licenciados; SPLIU: Sindicato Nacional dos Professores
Licenciados pelos Politécnicos e Universidades; USPROF: União Sindical dos Professores;
SINPROFE: Sindicato Nacional dos Professores e Educadores

9 Data provided by FENPROF.

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The ongoing conflict of teachers with the ME over the reform has so far passed through
two phases which we identify in accordance with the timings established by the govern-
ment’s proposals for negotiations and implementation of the measures.

Phase 1: Conception and negotiation of the general clauses

of the revision of the ECD (May 2006 to December 2007)
The Ministry of Education communicated its first proposal of the revised Statute to the
unions in May 2006. The negotiation process then lasted until January 2007 and
resulted in various strikes and protests against the government’s proposals and its per-
ceived ‘intransigent’ and ‘inflexible’ position throughout the negotiations. In October
2006 the conflict in public education converged with the budding conflict in public sec-
tor collective bargaining and the ongoing battle over the general reform. A web of
conflict thus emerged due to the iron front erected by the government and the ME on
practically all issues involving wages and industrial relations in the public sector as well
as all issues involving the revision of the ECD.

Open conflict and mobilisation were concentrated in the first semester of the 2006-2007
school year when the teachers’ struggle converged with public sector wage negotiations.
The public service unions had demanded between 3% and 5% in pay increases while
the government began its bargaining with a final offer of 1.5%. In this context, the
Frente Comum (FC) of the CGTP held a major demonstration in Lisbon in mid-Octo-
ber of up to 70 000 against the government’s reforms of the public sector and social
security. It simultaneously convoked a strike of the public service for November in
protest at the government’s ‘general offensive against public servants and the state sec-
tor’, and invited the FESAP and STE to join. The FC claimed that the government was
seeking ‘the destruction of important state functions, the closure and respective priva-
tisation of services that are essential to the population, facilitating a greater concentra-
tion of wealth and a greater impoverishment of the Portuguese population as a whole.’
(Correio da Manhã, 12 October 2006) The FC alleged that the government sought to
‘end the career system, where promotions have been frozen since August 2005, degrade
retirement pensions, permit dismissal without just cause, end the public employment
status of all workers …’ Besides the wage issues involved, these claims reflected a con-
vergence of the opposition to the reform of the state and the proposals for the ECD in
the public education sector. In the collective bargaining sessions immediately following
the October demonstration and the strike call no tangible results were produced. On
17 October teachers went on strike. The day before, the government had presented its
budget proposal to Parliament. Thus the timing of this strike heightened the sense of
antagonism between the public sector unions and an unyielding government.

During the strike of 17 October, the Secretary of State for Education declared that
the unions were facing their last chance. In simultaneous statements, he made it clear
that the Ministry had reached its ‘definitive position’ regarding the introduction of the
two-tier career structure (Jornal de Notícias, 20 October 2006) and insisted that the

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government would legislate changes unilaterally if the unions did not go along with
the principles of evaluation, merit-based promotion and the two-tier career structure.
He even threatened that, in such a case, the government would withdraw a concession
it had just offered regarding a secondary issue. The unions’ spokesperson classified
the government position as ‘blackmail’.

In spite of the Ministry of Education having made some concessions, the bargaining proc-
ess came to an end by the end of October without any agreement. In accordance with the
legislation governing collective bargaining in the public sector, the unions requested a
supplementary negotiation period. At the onset of this, the two parties faced off in a bat-
tle of principles from which both sides knew the other would not retract. At the end of
the supplementary period on 20 November, although the Ministry had made some addi-
tional concessions, the unions still did not underwrite the proposal for the revision of the
ECD since the fundamental questions of principle had remained unaltered.

Nevertheless, the struggle over the new ECD did not end with the government’s ver-
dict. On 28 December 2006 the Platform of Teachers’ Unions complained to the ILO
against the Ministry of Education for violation of the law on collective bargaining. The
Ministry was accused of not having supplied the unions with necessary documentation
prior to bargaining sessions and of having initiated the supplementary bargaining round
on the basis of a document that had already been prepared for submission to the gov-
ernment for decision.

The revised ECD was approved on 19 January 2007. In February 2007 there were fur-
ther negotiations between the unions and the Ministry regarding the criteria for candi-
dacy to the new classification of ‘senior teacher’. Although no agreement was reached,
the regulations for selection were adopted. Alleging the legislation to be unconstitu-
tional, the Platform of Teachers’ Unions filed for an injunction in May 2007 with the
Lisbon Administrative Court against opening the first selection process for access to
the category of senior teacher. The Ministry of Education nevertheless opened the first
selection process for the 2006/2007 school year for approximately 40 000 vacancies for
senior teachers. This meant that of the 60 000 teachers who were eligible to apply,
20 000 would not be able to reach the top of the career. (Correio da Manhã, 2 June 2007)
On the day of the opening of candidacies, the teachers’ unions submitted a petition to
the ME to protest against the division of the teaching career in two hierarchical catego-
ries and the selection process.

While the first selection process for the grade of senior teacher was taking place, the
public service unions (FC, STE, FESAP) were negotiating the proposed system of
evaluation for public servants. These negotiations ended in June 2007 with an agree-
ment with the UGT unions (STE and FESAP). Subsequently on 24 July 2007 the ME
presented its proposal for performance assessment adapted to the teaching profession.
Negotiations began in September and continued until October with the request by the
unions for supplementary negotiations. However, as with other bargaining episodes in
this sector, these talks ended without an agreement with the unions.

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The failure to come to any agreement on the evaluation process at this time planted the
seeds of the major open conflict that was to develop within the next phase of negotia-
tions. It is therefore useful to detail the unions’ main disagreements with the ME’s
proposal. The unions perceived a ‘punitive’ bias to the ME’s conception of evaluation.
They objected to the proposed method of evaluation as excessively bureaucratic, over-
emphasising quantitative rather qualitative results of teaching performance. They
strongly opposed the establishment of quotas for the attribution of the grades of ‘very
good’ and ‘excellent’ and claimed that the schools lacked the necessary administrative
conditions to put such a bureaucratic process into practice on a timely basis. The ME
considered that the approval of both the ECD and the SIADAP for the public service
had established parameters for the negotiation of the procedures for evaluation and
therefore treated the unions’ objections as falling outside the legislated framework.
Consequently, the teachers’ unions vehemently protested that the ME simply would
not engage in dialogue with them on any issue of the reforms.

Following the negotiation period (and the absence of an agreement), the regulations
for the assessment of public school teachers were adopted and took effect on
11 January 2008. The government determined that the process should be launched
rapidly and that the schools should have a maximum of six months (until July) to put
together an assessment process. This was to take place in phases, beginning with the
definition of the individual objectives for each of the 150 000 teachers.

Phase 2: Monitoring and implementation of the ECD (June

2007 to April 2008)
The selection process for senior ‘entitled’ teachers and the unions’
role in monitoring injustices and illegalities
The measures regulating the selection of senior teachers were a point of intense con-
tention amongst unions and teachers. First, teachers perceived a problem of equity.
Since access to this category is dependent upon the existence of vacancies which are
determined for each school, teachers with inferior qualifications in less competitive
schools may attain the category of senior teacher while teachers with superior curric-
ula in more competitive schools with fewer vacancies may be excluded. Furthermore,
the criteria for grading candidates were neither politically nor legally consensual.
Having ‘confirmed injustices’ involving this measure, the Platform of Teachers’ Unions
decided in July 2007 to complain to the Education Commission of the Parliament and
the Public Advocate (Provedoria de Justiça) in the hope of testing the constitutionality
of the selection process.

For the selection process for 2007/2008 more than 32 000 teachers, that is, almost two-
thirds of the candidates, achieved the senior teacher level (Público, 31 July 2007). Upon
receiving the unions’ complaint concerning the constitutionality of the law, in the
beginning of August, the Public Advocate concurred that the legislation still needed

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‘indispensable corrections’ (Público, 5 July 2007) referring to the lack of equal oppor-
tunities for access to the new category of senior teacher. The Platform of Teachers’
Unions naturally considered that its positions had been strengthened by this opinion.
As its spokesperson, Mário Nogueira, claimed, the ME ‘remains even more isolated
through its insistence upon imposing a selection process that does not respect the basic
rules of equity and proportionality, ignores existing legal guidelines and provokes deep
injustice’ (Público, 4 August 2007). The ME eventually took into consideration the
recommendations of the Public Advocate and opened a grievance procedure for
proven cases of injustice. The ME decided to resolve such cases through the nomina-
tion of the candidates to the category of senior teacher. Nevertheless the teachers’
unions were not satisfied, having preferred a repeat of the selection process. Legal chal-
lenges pursued by the unions around this issue continue to be resolved. For example, it
was only in April 2008 that the Constitutional Court reached a decision in relation to
purported illegalities committed during this first contest.

The implementation of performance assessment – from legal battles

to an understanding
The most recent chapter of the conflict (since January 2008) involved the bitter struggle
of the unions to obtain the suspension of the assessment procedures during the
2007/2008 school year. The unions were confronted with an intransigent refusal on the
part of the Ministry to halt the process although there had been transparent failures on
the part of the Ministry to provide the necessary guidelines and standardised instru-
ments for the timely realisation of the first experiences of assessment. To a certain
extent the Ministry recognised its responsibility in this respect but refused to change the
process. Various schools informed the ME of their decision to boycott the process,
refusing to carry out instructions. Finally, the ME conceded to extending the intermedi-
ate deadlines for evaluation and sought to unblock some problems by delaying the
deadline for the first phase of evaluation. However, the teachers’ unions (as well as
other newly emergent extra-union teachers’ movements and some schools) continued
to demand the suspension of assessment for the 2007/2008 school year. The goal of
suspending the evaluation process, as a holding tactic eventually to modify the concep-
tion and scheme for assessment, provided the impetus for a massive surge in the mobi-
lisation of teachers and union initiatives. Besides protests and demonstrations, the
important tactic of the unions had been recourse to court action to seek injunctions
against the carrying out of the Ministry’s instructions to the schools. During the first
week of March 2008 following the initiative of FENPROF, teachers went into ‘mourn-
ing’ for education. In almost all the major cities of the country there were local demon-
strations of teachers in protest at the impending evaluation process and the ECD. In
the aftermath of this week of local demonstrations, which culminated in the massive
unprecedented demonstration of up to 100 000 teachers in Lisbon on 8 March 2008, the
Ministry retreated with regard to certain of the evaluation criteria, allowing for a flex-
ible application of its instructions at the level of the schools to guarantee that the
approximately 7 000 teachers on non-permanent contracts would be evaluated in time
for their contract renewal procedures. Following various requests of the Platform of

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Teachers’ Unions for the reopening of negotiations on the regulations for assessment,
the ME conceded to talks to be held between 11 March and 11 April. In the context of
significant tension in the relations between teachers, their unions and the government,
a substantial and surprising change was registered in the posture of the ME towards the
unions. However, at the same time that unprecedented teacher mobilisation was taking
place, the unions’ tactics suffered important undeniable setbacks on the legal front.
During these final two months of the struggle the Administrative Courts rejected the
various applications by the unions for injunctions against the evaluation process. From
the union standpoint this meant that realistic legal recourse was exhausted. The
Platform had premised its willingness to any agreed truce with the government upon
the suspension of the process and the convening of an experimental period of assess-
ment in the following school year, but it now had to relent to some extent. In the cir-
cumstances, the ME also relented on a series of items for the evaluation, defining a
simplified regime of evaluation to take effect immediately in 2008 for provisionally
hired teachers and for effective teachers who had reached the pay grades making them
eligible for promotion. The ME also made some further concessions. On the basis of
these mutual concessions, the unions and the ME announced on 11 April that they had
reached an understanding.

The memorandum of understanding signed by the unions and the ME on 17 April

was a singular moment of truce obtained in the course of a long and complex conflict.
It temporarily attenuated the crisis in the schools and protected the interests of the
more vulnerable provisionally hired teachers. However, in the wake of such an
intense and united defensive mobilisation, it is not at all certain whether this under-
standing will achieve a full consensus amongst teachers. There have been manifesta-
tions of criticism and protest among some elements of the teachers’ movement.
Nevertheless, FENPROF, the largest union grouping, has maintained its plans for
action in opposition to the revised ECD, the evaluation process and the new model
of school management.

At present assessment has begun in all schools. This may not be the end of the story of
this conflict over the reform of employment relations in public school teaching.

Similarities and specificities of the evolution of negotiation

and conflict with regard to the general public service reform
A comparison between the unions of the public administration overall and those of the
specific sector of public education with regard to the development of the conflicts
reveals both similarities and specificities.

1) Technocratic approach to reform: The Ministry of Education has been oriented, on

the one hand, by a technocratic, managerialist approach to the conception of the revi-
sion of the ECD. The option of introducing a new professional hierarchy in opposition
to the predominantly ‘egalitarian’ values of teachers and to the ideologies of their

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unions is characteristic of such an approach. It is based on the conviction that improved

quality of teacher performance follows from competitive individual merit-based pro-
motion. On the other hand, the Ministry considers that the ‘vested interests’ of the
teachers’ unions in the existing model make them incapable of usefully contributing to
the conception of a model which would take away the ground from under such inter-
ests. The unions therefore were not consulted in any significant way in the conception
of the proposals for revision advanced by the Ministry. The Ministry’s orientation for
the new model took off from acceptance of the liberal tenets of ‘New Public
Management’ and the need to bring about a convergence of the public professional
management model with human resource management in the private sector. The intro-
duction of such human resource management schemes in schools implies a revolution
in their institutional culture with very little continuity with the previous model of
employment relations for teachers. The approach has been to promote managerial
criteria as opposed to the professional criteria within the model of school administra-
tion. In practically all matters which have confronted aspects of professional control
within schools there has been a confrontation with the teachers’ unions. In such a con-
text, the exclusion of the unions from dialogue over the model to be negotiated could
only increase the probability of conflict.

2) Anti-union approach and tactics: The approach of the Ministry to the teachers’
unions has been particularly confrontational in the tactical, if not also strategic,
sense, starting from an apparent bias against the role of the teachers’ unions within
the system. The Ministry of Education developed its strategy starting from the
assumption that the teachers’ unions are obstacles to employment changes with the
aims of efficiency, once again due to the view that the unions have vested profes-
sional interests in the existing model. The Ministerial apparatus as well as the schools
are seen as bastions of corporatist unions with special interests. Frequently during
negotiations the Minister and Secretaries of State made remarks to the effect that
the reforms would go ahead in spite of the resistance of the teachers’ unions, fre-
quently seeking to distinguish the unions from the committed teachers, a difficult
task considering the relatively high unionisation of teachers. Within this discourse
teachers and their unions are portrayed as defending exclusively corporatist profes-
sional privileges to the detriment of the public interest, that is, of students and par-
ents. Specific decisions outside the purview of the revision of the ECD, such as the
decision of the government to reduce the number of union leaders and representa-
tives with the right to dispensation from their teaching duties for their union func-
tions, have contributed to the climate of general confrontation with the unions,
especially since the timing chosen for the application of such measures has generally
coincided with sensitive moments in negotiation processes.

3) Limitations upon negotiation and trade-offs: The technocratic attitude and anti-
union strategy have seemingly carried over to the Ministry’s negotiating behaviour. An
appropriate example, referred to above, can be seen in the timing of the decree for
reduction of leave for union leadership positions. Even when the Ministry has made
concessions to union positions it has maintained a characteristically confrontational

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posture and has not sought reconciliation with the unions. The overlapping of collec-
tive bargaining with the negotiation of the revision of the ECD and the government’s
inflexibility in public sector collective bargaining increased resentment and reduced
the scope for potential trade-offs for union concessions around reform measures.
This bargaining stance can be derived from at least two factors. First, the deficit
crisis and the commitment to consolidate the cutbacks in public spending lend
urgency and intransigence to the government’s strategy. Yet it is only with great dif-
ficulty and the confidence that comes from concertation that unions are able to
withstand austerity. Secondly, this government is aware that it possesses a rare series
of circumstances to push through its programme of modernisation. Its parliamentary
majority has given it sufficient legitimation and power to withstand union resistance.
However, urgency has resulted from its need to obtain significant headway in its
programme within its four-year mandate. Analysing the government’s practice and
not just its rhetoric, it is easy to conclude that its strategy has not effectively con-
tained much space for the conventional notion of social dialogue as the means to
achieve its reform.

4) Trade union resistance: Finally the Ministry of Education has come up against an
uncharacteristically tight and unified coalition of teachers’ unions. Due to the strong
professional identity of Portuguese teachers, the teachers’ unions tend to have a
common view of most professional and career issues in spite of their ideological dif-
ferences. This is another specific characteristic of the conflict in education in con-
trast with the public sector as a whole. In spite of their political and status-based
fragmentation, there has been significant unity among teachers’ unions in the con-
flict over the ECD. The ‘paradigmatic shock’ of the government orientation for the
revision of the ECD for the teachers’ unions’ common professional ideology, as well
as the practical interdependence of the teachers’ unions given the imbalance between
their representative union organisations, led to their coalition within the joint
Platform generally acting in a united fashion within the negotiations. This unity of
perspective and action has carried over into the positions of the teachers’ unions with
regard to other professional and career interests. Although the two main federations
of teachers’ unions have had different initial reactions to the government’s announced
proposals for changes in the model of school management, they have continued to
present strongly united opposition to the Ministry of Education in practically all
issues deriving from the new statute.

Concluding remarks: teachers’ unionism, the conflict

between professionalism and the managerialist reform

It is our contention that the character of the opposition of Portuguese teachers’ unions
to the government’s reform projects, i.e. the exceptional unity of the unions and the
degree of mobilisation, derives from the specificity of the trade unionism of teachers as
a particular kind of professional trade unionism as well as the peculiarities of Portuguese

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teachers’ trade unionism.10 Although this professionalism does not necessarily result in
a unique perspective of teachers on the wide range of employment issues and interests
that are affected by the reforms in progress, a common perspective emerged amongst
the teachers’ unions. This tendency has been sufficiently strong that the teachers’
unions, in spite of their very fragmented and politically divided structure, and in con-
trast to the public service unions overall, have converged in a common platform to
express their voice in the negotiations.

Professionalisation implies a search for professional control of the conditions of profes-

sional activity. Teachers as professionals not only possess common identities deriving
from their professional community but have an inherent tendency towards an organised
reflexivity with regard to the relationship between what they do (i.e. teaching) and their
relationships with the institutions within which they exercise their activity. To the extent
that their professional activity is carried out in the conditions of dependent salaried
employees, i.e. in the conditions of ‘proletarianised’ employment, the professional
identity tends to be carried over into their unionism and it is ‘naturally’ difficult for
teachers and their unions to demarcate clearly the spheres of their collective action in
terms of employment from professional concerns as pedagogues.

Taking these issues into account, it is necessary to take into consideration the specific
history of teachers’ trade unionism in Portugal, its orientation, the balance it has devel-
oped between employment and professional issues and the forms in which the profes-
sional roles of teachers and their unions have been institutionalised within the public
educational system in Portugal.

Portuguese teachers’ unions have not restricted their activity to professional issues but
have sought to be privileged participants, indeed often protagonists, with regard to
educational policy as a whole. In this context, Portugal’s educational system is notably
unstable due to the constant changes in educational policy that have accompanied the
frequent shifts in government since the democratic consolidation in the late 1970s.
Throughout this period the teachers’ unions have been deeply reflexive actors consist-
ently seeking to promote democratic and inclusive values in public education (Stoer
1985; Teodoro 1994). This article has attempted to show the degree and amplitude of
reform intended by the present government not only in teachers’ employment relations
but in the operation of schools and in the roles and tasks of teachers. Since the unions
do not limit their voice to narrow employment interests and consider the professional
purview as involving voice in educational policy as a whole, the scope of conflict has
been even wider than in other areas of public service.

10 This concern with the influence of professionalisation on teachers’ trade unionism is derived from the
sociological literature on professions (Freidson 1986; Abbot 1988; Rodrigues 2002). Freire et al. (2004)
studied the associational proclivities of Portuguese professions and came to similar conclusions as
Stoleroff (2000) regarding the overlapping of certain professional associations and ‘orders’ with trade
unions of the same categories of professionals as employees but did not include teachers as a profession
in their study.

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Furthermore, teachers’ associational activity in Portugal is limited to union organisation.

There is no single publicly recognised professional association or ‘order’ for Portuguese
public school teachers. The absence of such a type of association contributes to broaden-
ing the scope of the professional pretensions of Portuguese teachers’ unions.

As we have analysed above, the government’s conceptions of the reform and its urgency
have entered into collision with the professional interests common to Portuguese teach-
ers’ unions. The reforms sought by the government have not been limited to salaries,
working time or other issues involved in a restricted definition of the employment rela-
tion but have rather struck at the conception and status of the public school teaching
career. Several components of the reform, such as the new legislation regarding the
academic credential requirements and the state-controlled examinations for entry into
employment, touch upon typical professional pretensions for control. However, the
issue of evaluation touched upon a particularly sensitive professional nerve. Although
teachers’ unions tacitly accept performance evaluation, individual merit-based promo-
tion is for them neither the only possible nor the logical consequence of evaluation; the
application of quotas to the evaluation process is entirely unacceptable to them.
Nevertheless, throughout the negotiation of the revision of the ECD, the government
did not open the door to dialogue with the teachers’ unions over the mechanisms to be
applied in the evaluation process. Indeed only following the demonstration of 100 000
teachers in Lisbon on 8 March 2008 and the emergence of a very tense situation in the
schools did the Minister of Education concede a more flexible and decentralised pro-
cedure for applying evaluation in this first year of the experience. Thus, the outcome of
the reform process in education may be uncertain. While in other areas of the public
service conflict may subside as a result of partial agreements obtained with the UGT
unions, the web of conflict that has emerged in public education has not yet even begun
to be untangled.

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