Macau (MNA) – On Tuesday, the Legislative Assembly (AL) accepted a new proposal by José Pereira Coutinho to discuss and vote on a possible union and collective bargaining law, the legislator told MNA.
This is Mr. Coutinho’s sixth proposal to discuss the law, after the Legislature had debated and voted against nine proposals to enact the legislation.
According to a letter sent to MNA by Mr. Coutinho, while the city is getting ready to celebrate 20 years since its founding in 1999, ‘a lot of work still remains to be done’ in order to enforce Article 27 of the Macau SAR Basic Law.
Article 27 states that local residents have the right and freedom to ‘form and join trade unions, and to strike’.
No specific legislation on these rights has yet been enforced.
The legislator also said that, as per normal procedures, the AL President, Ho Iat Seng, will decide the date in which the proposal will be submitted to the plenary for debate and voting.
‘We hope that AL legislators support this project in order to cover for a major gap in the Macau SAR law,’ Mr. Coutinho said in his written statement today.
The last time the AL voted on a union law proposal was October 2010, with the bill rejected by 15 votes against, 12 in favour, and 2 abstentions.
The Association of Political Economic Studies of Macau, chaired by local businessman Kevin Ho King Lun, was granted a MOP837,000 (US$103,529) contract by the Macau SAR Government to study the relevance of a union law for the city, with the results to be delivered in the second half of this year.
