Modalities, conditions and perspectives of a Social Pact

Abstract

The expression social pact, used in this article, comprises a considerable variety of practices more or less institutionalized in some countries in the Western Europe. Generally it is an agreement at the national scale, periodically or exceptionally between the unionist movement, the employers' organizations and, eventually, the government, with the purpose of securing, during a certain term or permanently, the conditions for a relative «social peace». It means the acceptance, by those parts interested in it, of a certain economic and social program, to the supposed benefits of which certain immediate or even strategic aims are sacrificed. In the first part of the article, one describes the main modalities of a social pact, distinguishing principally the so-called «crisis pacts» from the «institutionalized pacts» and examining the strait relationship between the mechanisms of the social pact and the whole of the political game. In the second part, one deals with the question of the social pact in Portugal, from an analysis of the evolution in the Portuguese labour situation. One concludes that, in Portugal, governments will indeed lie better on the political pact that will give rise to than on a social pact that, for the time being, only the political will and imagination support. As an appendix, one presents the results from an inquiry to the Portuguese enterprises an eventual social pact.