The Social Security Institute acknowledged that “layoffs” at European car companies were verified on Monday

The president of the Social Security Institute (ISS) said today that the “layoffs” at the European car company were only approved on Monday, but he admitted that since the company submitted its request in accordance with the formal requirements, it had in fact been approved.

Octavio Oliveira admitted that “you could say that the process was validated from a substantive point of view from the moment the company made the official request”, recognizing that there were some procedural delays in the eligibility of workers who requested sick leave.

According to Octávio Oliveira, the Social Security Agency validated Autoeuropa’s request on Monday, July 8, and it is expected that the Social Security Agency will process the amounts owed during the layoffs on July 17. The relevant payments were paid on July 26.

At the request of the PCP parliamentary group, the ISS president answered questions from delegates at a hearing of the Labour, Social Security and Inclusion Committee on the consequences of job cuts at Volkswagen Europe and supplier companies.

In her initial intervention, Communist Party of the Philippines representative Paula Santos expressed “bewilderment” over the fact that workers at the Palmera Automotive plant in the Setubal region were being laid off, even before such a claim was verified by the ISS.

During the hearing, Octavio Oliveira recalled that the company’s management justified the use of redundancies for structural and technical reasons, in accordance with legal provisions, and that the Autoeuropa Workers’ Committee accepted its application and signed an agreement in which the company undertook to complete 100% of the workers’ wages, including salary and shift allowances.

The Autoeuropa plant in Palmela, in the Setúbal district, decided to implement a layoff system for 3,742 of the company’s 4,900 workers over 8 days in June and 13 days in July, as part of the decarbonization processes and technological transformation of the plant’s infrastructure, necessary for the production of new models.

In prior negotiations with the workers’ council, Autoeuropa committed to paying all workers in full wages and shift allowances during the period when the redundancy system was in place.

Answering a question from MP Ana Paula Bernardo (PS) about the evolution of layoffs in the country, the ISS President revealed that in 2022, 068 employers used this tool, with a total of 89,476 beneficiaries, which translated into a burden of 132 million euros.

Octavio Oliveira added that in 2023, 2,479 entities had adopted redundancy measures, benefiting a total of 33,845 people and at a cost of 31 million euros. According to the president of the ISS, this year until last June, 21,776 employers had adopted redundancy measures, equivalent to a loss of 23 million euros.