Continuing training in Portugal: the 40 yearly hours and what they are worth

The number, and why two of them are in circulation

Article 131(2) of the Portuguese Labour Code says that «o trabalhador tem direito, em cada ano, a um número mínimo de quarenta horas de formação contínua ou, sendo contratado a termo por período igual ou superior a três meses, a um número mínimo de horas proporcional à duração do contrato nesse ano»¹. Forty hours, then, and the doubt that sends so many people to search for «35 or 40» has a simple explanation: for ten years it was 35.

The original wording of Law 7/2009 said, word for word, «um número mínimo de trinta e cinco horas de formação contínua»³. Law 93/2019 of 4 September replaced that whole paragraph with the version in force today, carrying the forty hours², and its final article brings the law into force «no primeiro dia útil do mês seguinte ao da sua publicação», that is on 1 October 2019. Anyone finding the figure 35 today on a training provider page, in an onboarding manual or in an institutional publication is reading something that was never updated, not an alternative regime.

The sentence almost everyone reads backwards

It is worth returning to paragraph 2 and looking at where the proportion is attached. The proportional rule appears after the words «sendo contratado a termo», and nowhere else in the article. Three different situations follow, and the two at the extremes almost always surprise:

Someone hired in November on a permanent contract is, on the literal reading, entitled to 40 hours for that year. Someone starting in July on a six-month fixed term is entitled to twenty. It is counter-intuitive, but it is what the sentence says, and it is why the training hours calculator only reduces the entitlement when the contract is fixed-term. In practice some employers prorate the hiring year of a permanent contract too; the calculator flags that difference rather than hiding it, because the divergence is real and the worker has an interest in knowing it exists.

What already counts as training given

Before adding up what the company owes you, there is an offset almost nobody applies. Article 131(4) says that, «para efeito de cumprimento do disposto no n.º 2, são consideradas as horas de dispensa de trabalho para frequência de aulas e de faltas para prestação de provas de avaliação, ao abrigo do regime de trabalhador-estudante, bem como as ausências a que haja lugar no âmbito de processo de reconhecimento, validação e certificação de competências»¹.

That means those hours discharge the employer duty exactly as a course the employer had organised would. A working student who took twenty hours off for classes and assessments already has half the annual minimum satisfied, and the company only owes the remaining twenty. Counting those hours as zero is the mistake that inflates the calculation the most.

Outside paragraph 4, the training must come from the employer, from a certified training body or from a recognised education establishment, and it produces a certificate and an entry in the Individual Competences Record (paragraph 3).

Two clocks, and why the calculation reaches back five years

The idea that training hours die on 31 December is false, and it is what makes people understate what they are owed. There are two linked deadlines.

The first is in article 131(6): the employer «pode antecipar até dois anos ou, desde que o plano de formação o preveja, diferir por igual período, a efectivação da formação anual a que se refere o n.º 2, imputando-se a formação realizada ao cumprimento da obrigação mais antiga». The second is in article 132(1): the hours «que não sejam asseguradas pelo empregador até ao termo dos dois anos posteriores ao seu vencimento, transformam-se em crédito de horas em igual número para formação por iniciativa do trabalhador». And paragraph 6 of the same article closes the chain: «o crédito de horas para formação que não seja utilizado cessa passados três anos sobre a sua constituição».

Two years of deferral plus three years of credit life. That chain is what explains why the Portuguese labour authority, in the simulator it publishes on this matter, asks for the training hours delivered over the last five years, and it is the window our calculator uses: doing the arithmetic over the window the enforcing authority uses is doing it for the number an inspector would produce.

It is worth holding on to what the credit is, because it is not merely a theoretical balance. Article 132(2) says it «é referido ao período normal de trabalho, confere direito a retribuição e conta como tempo de serviço efectivo»: it is used inside working hours, it is paid, and the time counts. Ten days notice to the employer is enough (paragraph 3). Where credits from several years exist, any training taken is always imputed to the oldest one (paragraph 5), so that it is spent before it lapses.

What the hours you never got are worth

Article 134 is a single sentence and it is the one that turns all of this into an amount: «cessando o contrato de trabalho, o trabalhador tem direito a receber a retribuição correspondente ao número mínimo anual de horas de formação que não lhe tenha sido proporcionado, ou ao crédito de horas para formação de que seja titular à data da cessação»¹.

Note what the article does not say: it draws no distinction as to the reason for the ending. It applies to dismissal, to the expiry of a fixed term and to the case where the worker resigns, exactly like the other end-of-contract credits of article 245.

The hour is valued by the formula in article 271, the same one the hourly rate calculator uses: monthly pay multiplied by twelve, divided by fifty-two times the normal weekly working period. On the pay that feeds that formula the labour authority simulator is explicit: base pay, seniority payments and regular periodic supplements go in, and travel allowances, meal, transport and representation allowances and commissions stay out.

An example with round numbers. On a salary of 1,200 € and a 40-hour week, the hour is worth 6.92 €. A worker who had no training at all this year and only 40 hours across the previous four years has 40 hours missing this year and 120 in the previous ones, that is 160 hours inside the window against a ceiling of 200. On termination, article 134 gives them 1,107.69 €, of which 276.92 € belong to the current year. After the 11 % Social Security deduction that leaves 985.84 € before income tax. Almost a month of salary, for training that never happened.

What is left out

Because the credit «confere direito a retribuição», the amount is employment income: it carries the 11 % employee Social Security share and category-A income tax. The calculator deducts Social Security and flags the income tax without computing it, because it depends on each person bracket and on the rest of their annual income.

Four things are also deliberately left out. The adaptations of the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira, which the labour authority simulator also excludes. The regimes set by collective agreement, which article 131(9) expressly allows: the statutory figures are floors, and a collective instrument may give more hours. Periods in which the contract was suspended, through illness or for any other reason. And temporary work and cedência ocasional, where article 131(8) says the training secured by the user or the transferee discharges the employer, with any compensation between them «em termos a acordar».