Outsourcing and portuguese collective bargaining

Comunicação apresentada na Global Conference on Business and Finance, 2010. The globalization, the technological innovations, the pressures of the market means that enterprises have to face new challenges that to surmount them, has to adopt new business processes, increase the productivity and innovation at all the levels, namely organizational. The new forms of business organization are based on network cooperation, and often achieved by outsourcing. The outsourcing and network programs have important effects on the rates of Union affiliation, on the collective bargaining structure, and effects on the effectiveness of Union collective bargaining as an instrument to regulate labour relations. The effects of outsourcing and network cooperation in working relationships can and should be regulated in collective bargaining. Thus, we will examine how Portuguese collective bargaining considers the complex nature of corporate employers, analyze if collective agreements consider the new working forms and the diversification of employees status, analyze the dispositions that aim to protect the employees of the outsourcer and analyze the dispositions that aim to protect the employees of contracted enterprises. So, this work aims to study, in a critical perspective, the response of Portuguese collective bargaining to the effects of outsourcing and business networks in industrial relations.