Inside the Trabalho XXI Bill That Lands in Parliament This Week — The Banco de Horas Grupal Falls Out, the SME Reintegration Bar Goes Up, Outsourcing After Collective Dismissal Drops to Six Months and the Caducidade Path Gets Wider

The Trabalho XXI labour-reform bill heads into the Assembleia da República on Wednesday and Thursday with neither UGT nor CGTP signed onto it, and a CGTP general strike already locked for 3 June (pre-aviso filed at the Ministério do Trabalho on Monday 11 May at 13:00). The procedural headlines have been hammered for ten weeks — "no agreement," "social partners walk out," "strike called." The substantive question is what is actually inside the legislative text after three rounds of redrafts. The latest version, dated late April and published on the government portal as the Anteprojeto de Lei da Reforma da Legislação Laboral, sits a long way from the August 2025 first cut. Five clauses move the file.

1. Banco de horas grupal — repealed, replaced

The single biggest change since August is the disappearance of the banco de horas grupal — the regime that allowed employer-set time-banking by company-wide majority. The latest text fully repeals it. In its place, the bill creates a banco de horas por acordo activated only by express employer-worker agreement, and only where there is no applicable collective convention. Earlier drafts kept a "banco de horas individual" alongside the grupal; the late-April version drops the grupal entirely and renames the individual modality. The walked-back design is a direct response to UGT and CGTP red lines.

2. Fixed-term contracts — grounds widened, caps held

The earlier proposal to extend the certain-term cap from 2 to 3 years, and the uncertain-term cap from 4 to 5, has been dropped. What survives is the expansion of grounds: anyone "que nunca tenha prestado atividade ao abrigo de contrato de trabalho" — first-time workers who have never held any labour contract — can be hired on a fixed-term basis, regardless of whether the role is permanent. Long-term unemployed and reformados (retirees returning to work) join the eligibility list. The SME-only restriction for new ventures comes off. The unions read the change as a widening of precariousness; the government reads it as labour-market entry.

3. Reintegração após despedimento — SME bar goes up

The court power to bar reinstatement after a wrongful dismissal — limited under current law to micro-enterprises — extends in the new bill to small and medium-sized enterprises. Large employers remain outside the perimeter. Where the bar applies, the compensation floor moves to 45 days' salary per year of service. The reach of the new clause is the operationally consequential change: most Portuguese firms are SMEs, and the standard reach moves with them.

4. Outsourcing after collective dismissal — 12 months to 6

The current 12-month freeze on outsourcing the same role after a collective or individual-economic dismissal drops to 6 months in the new text. The scope is narrowed to the "âmbito da atividade principal" of the dismissing firm. The window halves; the perimeter tightens. UGT cited this clause specifically in its non-signature note as "insufficient mitigation of the abuse risk."

5. Caducidade da contratação coletiva — wider path, no arbitration

The bill facilitates the caducidade — the automatic expiry — of collective conventions that have not been renegotiated, removes the application of caduco conventions to outsourced workers, and eliminates the existing arbitration mechanism for resolving deadlocks. The combined effect is a wider lapse path for collective agreements, and fewer institutional brakes on it. CGTP names this clause as the structural reason for the 3 June general strike.

One smaller compromise — and one wider reach

The proteção na parentalidade clauses softened in the redraft: the breastfeeding dispensa is capped at the child's second birthday rather than the third, but the medical-certificate cadence relaxed from monthly (initial draft) to certificates only at 12 and 18 months. Fathers gain three consecutive paid days for gestational loss. The dispensa por inadaptação threshold widened — the procedure for terminating workers found unsuitable for restructured roles can now run on shorter timelines, and the ACT decision window extended from 30 to 45 days with tacit acceptance after.

What the parliamentary read looks like

The PSD-CDS-IL bloc carries the bill mathematically; PS and the Bloco vote against; Chega has signalled selective abstentions on the most contested clauses. Final-reading vote is unlikely before late May. The 3 June CGTP general strike is timed to land before the bill clears specialty committee, and the UGT — outside the strike — has reserved the right to escalate after the parliamentary text is fixed. The 31 May reprogramming deadline for PRR adjustments is structurally adjacent: any labour-side reform that would have qualified for RRF financing has to be on the books before that date or it does not count toward the August execution cliff.

What this means for expats

• Foreign workers on fixed-term contracts: the cap is unchanged at 2 and 4 years. The grounds widen — first-time workers and retirees gain eligibility — but if you are already on your second renewal, the timeline framework you signed under is the framework that applies.
• Foreign-owned SMEs: the reintegration bar reach extends to your firm. If you employ between 10 and 250 workers, the wrongful-dismissal litigation calculus changes — barring reinstatement is now legally available where it was not before.
• Outsourcing-dependent operations: the 6-month freeze after collective dismissal is materially shorter than the 12-month current rule, and narrower in scope. Restructuring timelines compress.
• Workers covered by a sectoral convention: the wider caducidade path raises the structural risk that your sectoral agreement lapses without renewal. If your collective convention is mid-renegotiation, the new institutional brakes are weaker.

The political headlines will be about whether the bill passes and what the strike looks like. The operational headlines — for anyone employed in or running a business in Portugal — are about which clauses move and where. The five above are the ones that will reshape the workplace.