Between January and December 2025, there were 839 strike notices, representing a 23.66 percent decrease compared to the 1,099 registered throughout 2024.

The number of strike notices recorded its first decline in 2024, after rising consecutively since 2021, and the 839 notices registered last year are the lowest since 2020, a period marked by the pandemic, when 650 notices were recorded, according to Lusa's analysis based on data provided by DGERT.

Of the 839 pre-notices registered in 2025, the majority (661, equivalent to 78.8 percent) relate to the non-business sector of the State, while the remaining 178 were registered in the business sector of the State.

Regarding minimum services, they decreased by 7.3 percent in 2025 compared to the same period of the previous year, to 178, according to DGERT data.

In December 2025, there were 64 strike notices, a 72.17 percent decrease from the 230 registered in the previous year.

Of these 64 strike notices, the majority were also registered in the non-business sector of the State (56, equivalent to 87.5 percent), while the remaining eight were in the business sector of the State.

By sector, transport and storage had the highest number of strike notices submitted in the last month of 2025, accounting for 22 percent of the total, followed by manufacturing and administrative and support services (both at 20 percent).

In December, 44 decreed minimum services were recorded, a 51.7 percent increase from the 29 registered in the last month of 2024.

The month of December coincided with the general strike called by the CGTP and UGT against the Government's proposed revision of labour legislation, the fifth to bring together the two trade union confederations and the first since the joint strike of 27 June 2013.

The changes to the strike law are one of the measures most criticised by the trade union confederations.

The government wants to integrate childcare, elderly care, sick care, and disability services into the minimum services required during a strike, as well as the food supply sector and private security services for essential goods or equipment.

According to the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, Rosário Palma Ramalho, the idea is "to be a little more demanding regarding the definition of minimum services, but without eliminating the right to strike," and making it "only compatible with other fundamental rights," namely the right to health, work, or "to move freely."

The Labour Code currently stipulates that in case of a strike, minimum services must be ensured "in companies or establishments intended to satisfy essential social needs," which include postal and telecommunications services, medical, hospital and pharmaceutical services, public health services, including funeral services, energy and mining services, including fuel supply.

Also included are water supply, fire brigades, public service departments that ensure the satisfaction of essential needs whose provision is the responsibility of the State, transport, including ports, airports, railway and truck stations, relating to passengers, animals and perishable foodstuffs and goods essential to the national economy, covering their respective loading and unloading and the transport and security of monetary valuables.