Employers Told the Equality Commission 1,777 Times Last Year That a Pregnant Worker's Contract Would Not Be Renewed, and the Law Asks Only for Five Days' Notice

Portuguese employers sent 1,777 notifications in 2025 telling the state that a fixed-term contract would not be renewed, and that the worker on the other end of it was pregnant, had recently given birth, was breastfeeding, or was on parental leave. The figure comes from the Comissão para a Igualdade no Trabalho e no Emprego (Commission for Equality in Labour and Employment), the body known as CITE, and was published on Tuesday by the equality commission of the CGTP-IN trade union confederation ahead of National Natality Day on Wednesday.

The 2025 count is down from 1,894 in 2024. Over the five years from 2020 to 2024, employers filed 8,299 such non-renewal notices, alongside 534 dismissals and 544 terminations during probation periods involving the same protected workers.

Why the number exists at all

These are not complaints. They are legally required filings. Article 144(3) of the Código do Trabalho (Labour Code) obliges an employer to tell CITE the reason for not renewing a fixed-term contract, at least five working days before the notice date, whenever the worker is pregnant, postpartum or breastfeeding, on parental leave, or a registered carer. Failing to do so is a serious administrative offence under Article 144(5), a heavier classification than the minor offence attached to the code's other notification duties.

CITE itself stresses that the filings do not by themselves establish discrimination. What they establish is that the situation arose 1,777 times in one year and was flagged to the state each time.

The contrast with dismissal is the point. Article 63 of the same code says an employer cannot dismiss a pregnant, postpartum or breastfeeding worker, or one on parental leave, without a prior opinion from CITE. Such a dismissal is presumed to lack just cause; the burden of proving the opinion was requested falls on the employer; and if CITE comes back against it, the employer can only proceed after a court decision. CITE has 30 days to answer, and silence counts as agreement.

Letting a fixed-term contract lapse triggers none of that. Article 145 does give the worker preference for a permanent job if the employer externally recruits for identical functions within 30 days of the contract ending, with damages of three months' base pay if that preference is ignored, but the worker has to allege the breach first.

The natality argument

The union's equality commission tied the figures to Portugal's birth rate: a fertility index of 1.30 children per woman last year, well below the roughly 2.1 associated with generational replacement, and a mean age at first birth of 30.4 years, up from 30.0 in 2014. It also cited the 2023 pay gap of 12.5 percent on base pay, 1,286.20 euros for men against 1,124.90 for women, widening to 15.4 percent on average earnings, or 241.60 euros a month.

Its conclusion was blunt. A natality policy "cannot ask women for more children while accepting that their work continues to be less valued and less well paid". The commission called the filings "thousands of situations that require monitoring and inspection".

Where the policy stands

The government has been moving on adjacent fronts rather than this one. It tied a longer parental leave to sharing it between both parents in July, and in August moved to strip repeat pay-discrimination offenders of tax breaks and public contracts. Its pay transparency bill leaves salaries out of job adverts, which the UGT says defeats the purpose. The Trabalho XXI package, which would have reworked the code's fixed-term rules, died in parliament in June.

Meanwhile Portugal's births ticked up in mid-2026, with immigrant mothers holding the line. Workers who want to know what they are owed before a contract runs out can start with our guide to claiming subsídio parental.