Officers, Sergeants want “real, legitimate negotiations – just like security forces”
Associations representing Portugal’s Armed Forces have “expressed disappointment today” after a meeting about pay with the secretary of state for defence.
Says Lusa news agency, the associations want a “real and legitimate round of negotiations” with the minister (not the secretary of state). They want to be treated, in other words, in much the same way as the government treated Portugal’s security forces recently.
This position has been taken by the Armed Forces Officers‘ Association (AOFA) and the National Sergeants’ Association (ANS) – both of which “were summoned to a meeting with the deputy secretary of state for national defence, Álvaro Castelo Branco, on ‘military pay and salaries’, writes Lusa
According to AOFA, today’s meeting “was not a process/procedure of a negotiating nature, since no matter was presented beforehand nor during the meeting for consideration in the form of a proposal that would even indicate the outline of a procedure of the type or similar to those developed in the context of social dialogue and negotiation with a trade union or socio-professional entity, such as the one that took place with the professionals of the PSP, GNR and Prison Guards.
“There will only be true social and institutional dialogue and a true expression of the right to representation and collective bargaining that is due to military professional associations with the presence at these meetings of the Minister of National Defence”.
ANS backed AOFA to the hilt, saying it was “surprised” not to have been presented with “any document” – and that the secretary of state could not even assure them that this would happen at some stage in the near future.
Álvaro Castelo Branco was similarly vague over the ‘military condition supplement’, saying it would be “reviewed quantitatively in the sense of an increase, as soon as possible”, without committing to the form and values in which this would be done.
“The same government that grants recognition of the right to representation and negotiation to the representative structures of the professionals of the Security Forces and Services’ does not do so with the representative structures of the military of the Armed Forces”, said ANS.
Bottom line: ANS equally wants to see defence minister Nuno Melo on the other side of the negotiating table.
“We cannot accept this repeated discriminatory treatment, which is contrary to what is defined in the law, placing the Armed Forces’ military in a subordinate position to other professional groups, namely the special bodies of the State. Much less do we accept that the military chiefs should carry out the socio-professional representation of all military personnel in these matters since this function is nowhere assigned to them by law, and they cannot much less accept exercising this function for reasons of incompatibility, as employers appointed by the government itself”.
ANS stresses it hopes for “a change in the attitude of the ministry (of defence) towards professional associations of the military, in the sense of building a loyal, frank and honest dialogue, a real negotiation between two parties that should be on the same side and not in opposing camps”.
Earlier this month, at the end of the NATO summit in Washington, prime minister, Luís Montenegro, announced that the government would ‘set in motion’ the negotiation process with the military, with a view to a pay rise. He did not commit to amounts, stressing no rise could compromise public accounts.
Source material: LUSA
