Jornal T – Portugal needs to hire immigrants for the textile sector
Complaints from companies that face the difficulties in hiring labor are multiplying and there are those who already foresee a huge problem with the replacement of the 56,000 workers in the sector who retire by 2030. Valuing and officially recognizing work as an art textiles in order to attract and captivate new generations is a path that no longer seems to be enough. The solution, says the president of the ATP, involves hiring immigrants.
“There is no one in Portugal who will replace the workers who will retire in the next ten years and it is only with immigration that we will be able to overcome the manpower that we will lack”, says Mário Jorge Machado in a long report broadcast by RTP on RTP. Sunday Afternoon Newspaper.
A solution that compares with what our country has already done with Germany and France, to which many Portuguese emigrated. “Portugal was already a supplier of emigrants to these countries and we in Portugal today need immigrants”, says the president of the ATP, explaining that “although part of the work is already being subcontracted in North Africa, where, unlike the Europe, there is a lot of young labor in need of employment”.
Based on the reality of a sector that exports 80% and could lose 56,000 jobs by 2030, artoll by journalist Eduarda Dias uses three companies in the Barcelos area as an example. At Os Cândidos, specialized in tailoring, administrator Cristina Laranjeiras asks that “tailors be recognized as artists, their work as an art, in order to value it and captivate young people”, while Francisco Correia, from Frasilpor, warns that “one day we will have orders and we will not have someone to execute them”. And the realization that “there is no labor and that the sector is increasingly aging” has her at home when she looks at her workers and does not see any of their descendants used in textiles.
“A situation that if not quickly reversed will become a very serious problem”, says José Costa, administrator of the Becri group, with around 600 workers, who also points to the valorization of textile work as art. “The textile industry is labor intensive but not labor intensive. It’s art. And if we look at this as art, I think we are going to attract young people again to a textile industry”, believes the businessman.