A Trade Union Association requested the intervention of the Ombudsman regarding the decision to suspend the payment of salary supplements to two female agents of the Public Security Police (PSP) during pregnancy and later during the breastfeeding period. Considering that it wouldn’t be safe for the agents to perform shift work or patrol, the PSP assigned them other tasks and thus suspended the payment of the so-called shift and patrol supplements that previously were awarded to them. The Ombudsman considered that ensuring the safety and assigning compatible tasks to pregnant workers, without reducing their pay on those grounds is a general duty of every employer in any activity under the legal rules that grant special protection to workers in parenthood. There was, therefore, no reason for the law enforcement agents to have their monthly regular wages reduced when pregnant or while breastfeeding. • Cases Q-2661/16 and Q-6060/15 Entity addressed: State-owned enterprises (hospitals) Date: 2016.06.16 and 2016.10.25 Subject: Public servants working for state-owned enterprises. Work accidents Status: Accepted by the addressee The lack of clarity of a legislative amendment lead to public employees working in enterprises of the public sector not being compensated in the event of a work accident: the Caixa Geral de Aposentações – a central body responsible for the payment of pensions due to accidents at work suffered by workers in public functions – and those public entities with an entrepreneurial nature attributed to each other the responsibility for that compensation. The Ombudsman concluded that Caixa Geral de Aposentações was right: once liability for the compensation of occupational accidents is a responsibility of the employers, the public-sector enterprises, following the abovementioned legislative amendment, should have transferred the risk to insurance companies. Not having done so, they remain primarily responsible for compensating the damages sustained as a consequence of work accidents (medical expenses and compensation for permanent disability). In order to ascertain the degree of the disability of the worker, the employer is required to communicate the accident to the court. In regard to the plaintiffs, the Ombudsman suggested that the employers should pay for medical expenses and ask the court to ascertain the degree of disability of the workers – a suggestion that was accepted by the addressee. 138 |