Pereira Coutinho criticizes proposed Trade Union law as ‘limbless and authoritarian’

Lawmaker and president of the Macau Civil Servants Association (ATFPM), José Pereira Coutinho has opposed the draft proposal of the Trade Union law presented by the government over the weekend.
The lawmaker, who in the past has unsuccessfully submitted several bills to the Legislative Assembly (AL) on the matter, says that the proposal now being presented by the government is not what’s required.
“This Trade Union and collective negotiation law is a ‘limbless’ law. It’s a law that does not meet its aims,” said Coutinho. The lawmaker made the statement on the sidelines of a meeting with representatives of ATFPM with the Chief Executive (CE), Ho Iat Seng, to discuss matters related to the Policy Address for 2022.
“The way it is designed, it does not fulfill the requirements of independence that a trade union must enjoy and also does not fulfill the conditions of freedom and representativeness to be able to support those who are members of the union,” Coutinho said.
He added, “They [the government] are mostly copying the laws of Singapore, which is an authoritarian state, and also Taiwan. I do think that taking into account that the five [legal] codes of Macau are accurate representations of the five main Portuguese ones we should follow that. In Portugal, even the military staff and the police forces can be – and are – unionized, and the same goes for civil servants. Here we want to exclude them.”
For the leader of the ATFPM, the priority has been to maintain the status quo with the associations helping people in specific situations, rather than to move to a unionized system that lacks capacity and competence.
“If it has to be like this, it is best to be an association (as we have been constituted till now) since we have much greater freedom to help everyone, rather than to be part of a union that is ‘tied up’ and that at the end of the day cannot operate and cannot represent anyone.”
The lawmaker remarked that the ATFPM completely disagrees with the analysis that led to the drafting of the bill.
“It [the draft] lacks in independence, freedom, and the capacity to represent people, including in court cases. It is not useful! It’s a way of saying that we have [a trade union law] although it is useless,” he concluded.

Rejected 12 times
on lawmakers’ initiatives
A year ago, a trade union bill proposed by lawmakers Pereira Coutinho and Sulu Sou was rejected by the AL.
This was the 12th time that a bill of this kind was rejected.
Pereira Coutinho, together with several lawmakers linked to the Macao Federation of Trade Unions (FAOM), presented several bills aimed at the creation of a trade union law, over the last three legislative terms, all of which were rejected by the plenary.
In recent years, most lawmakers who voted against the proposals justified their vote by citing the alleged lack of compliance with a legislative procedure. In their opinion, the initiative to draft new laws should come from the government and not from lawmakers. These opponents in the AL believe that lawmakers drafting new legislation should request permission from the CE to advance the proposal before presenting it to the AL plenary.
The former pro-democracy wing, together with FAOM lawmakers, have consistently rejected this theory but have failed to convince a majority of the pro-establishment plenary.