First INESC TEC's Workers' Council takes office

“To value the workers and to value INESC TEC”. This is the motto of the first INESC TEC's Workers’ Council, which took office on 4 December in a ceremony that gathered dozens of collaborators. This way, INESC TEC becomes the first private-law research institution at a national level to have this kind of tool as an integral part of the management model.

By seeking to address a weakness detected at INESC TEC, which is related to the involvement of the workers in the management model, there was the need of creating a Workers’ Council that could contribute to the development and improvement of all the structure that surrounds the Institute and its collaborators.

“We want to mobilise the entire INESC TEC’s workers’ community for the defence of the interests and rights of everyone, for their personal and professional valorisation, always with an attitude of freedom, open dialogue and without prejudice, favouring the collaboration spirit and, above all, the transparency in the labour relations”, state its elements in the Manifesto drawn up at the time of the elections. 

To value in a structured way the career of the different types of professional connection to INESC TEC and to establish bridges with INESC TEC’s grant holders, trying, whenever possible, to align their interests with those of INESC TEC’s workers, are some of the commitments assumed in this inauguration, thus marking the beginning of the Council's works.

The INESC TEC’s Workers’ Council is composed by three elements: Rute Ferreira (Centre for Biomedical Engineering Research – C-BER), Filipe Joel Soares (Centre for Power and Energy Systems – CPES) and Catarina Maia (Technology Licensing Office – SAL).

With only one list in the run, the electoral process for selecting the council was held on 17 October.

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC.