Portuguese government working to mitigate impact of VW plant shutdown

The Portuguese government is working on various solutions to minimise the impact of the nine-week production stoppage at VW’s Autoeuropa car factory for workers and supplier companies, said the Secretary of State for Labour, Miguel Fontes.

“We already have a number of initiatives planned to respond to the different situations, whether it’s mobilising vocational training resources, which workers can use via the companies while this stoppage is taking place, or facilitating the social benefits to which they may be entitled so that they can be processed as quickly as possible,” Miguel Fontes told Lusa.

“The government is closely monitoring the situation,” said Fontes, noting on Monday that on Tuesday he, the labour minister and the secretary of state for the economy received the coordinating committee of the workers’ committees of the companies in the Autoeuropa Industrial Park.

Fontes also said that the government has been talking to those responsible at Autoeuropa, but pointed out that “the situation is not limited to Autoeuropa itself”.

“There is a whole group of companies that provide services to Autoeuropa. The aim is to be able to find out the situation of these companies, to what extent this stoppage affects them, and to try to find as many situations as necessary to try to minimise the impacts of this stoppage, particularly in terms of employment, which is the dimension that concerns us most,” he stressed.

On the other hand, added the secretary of state for labour, “The government is also making efforts to ensure that companies have the necessary instruments and support to be able to get through this phase more calmly, in the face of a situation that was not planned, but which obviously will have a major impact on the activity of these companies”.

Fontes also said that the contacts with Autoeuropa are aimed at understanding the situation of all the workers and companies affected by the production stoppage at Autoeuropa, which began on Monday and could last until 12 November, according to Autoeuropa’s own estimates.

“We have reports of various situations. We have workers who belong to Autoeuropa, we have workers who are on temporary labour contracts at Autoeuropa, and we have workers who belong to companies based at Autoeuropa Park and who have Autoeuropa as their only client. And then there are the companies that have several clients, but some of them where Autoeuropa accounts for a very significant proportion of their turnover. And each of these companies has adopted different strategies,” he said.

According to Miguel Fontes, Autoeuropa’s suppliers include a further 86 companies in addition to the 19 located on the industrial estate.

Autoeuropa was forced into a nine-week production stoppage due to the difficulties of a supplier in Slovenia, which was heavily affected by the floods that hit that country at the beginning of August.

The production stoppage has already led to the laying off of 300 temporary and fixed-term workers, 100 from the Volkswagen car plant, and around 200 from various companies based at the Autoeuropa industrial estate in Palmela, in the district of Setúbal.

(Gualter Ribeiro | Lusa.pt, edited by Nuno Simas)