Fired without just cause? Your rights in Portugal

In short: Portugal is not an "at-will" country. Article 53 of the Constitution guarantees segurança no emprego and bans dismissal without just cause, so an employer must both pick a legal ground (misconduct or one of three economic grounds) and follow the exact procedure for it. If they get either wrong, the dismissal is ilícito — and you have two fast reactions: a 5-day court injunction to suspend the dismissal, and a 60-day deadline to challenge it and claim back pay, compensation or reinstatement. CourtStairs answers Portuguese and EU employment questions like these in plain language, with citations to the Diário da República so you can read the article yourself.

Losing a job is stressful, and the deadlines here are short and unforgiving. This post maps the grounds against the procedure each one requires, then walks through the two clocks that start ticking the moment you receive the dismissal letter, and finally the remedies a labour court can award. It is current for 2026 and rests on the Código do Trabalho (Lei n.º 7/2009) and the Código de Processo do Trabalho.

Grounds vs procedure: what the law demands

A dismissal (despedimento) is employer-initiated. It is not the same as a fixed-term contract expiring (caducidade), a mutual exit (revogação), or your own resignation. Portuguese law recognises four dismissal grounds, and each carries its own mandatory procedure. The single most common reason dismissals are struck down is not that the reason was false — it is that the procedure was skipped or botched.

The crucial split is disciplinary vs economic. Misconduct punishes the worker's own serious, culpable behaviour and carries no compensation — but it demands a full disciplinary procedure. The other three are "objective" business grounds; each triggers the statutory compensação (14 days of base pay and seniority payments per full year of service, art. 366) and an advance-notice period, and each has a consultation-heavy procedure of its own. For how that statutory payout is calculated in practice, see our guide to severance pay in Portugal and the broader picture of employment termination and severance.

When a dismissal is unlawful (ilícito)

A dismissal is ilícito whenever the ground is invalid or the procedure is defective. Common examples: no nota de culpa before a misconduct dismissal; a "restructuring" that is really a disguised firing of one inconvenient person; missing consultation in a collective dismissal; or a decision based on facts that were exaggerated or never proven. A dismissal that is "right in substance but wrong in form" is still unlawful — which is exactly why procedure carries so much weight.

The two deadlines you cannot miss

The moment the written dismissal decision reaches you, two independent clocks start. They do different jobs, and you can use one, the other, or both.

1. Day 0 — you receive the decisionThe written dismissal decision is communicated. Note the exact date; every deadline below runs from it (or from the contract's end date, if later).
2. ~5 working days — suspension injunctionAs a rule you have 5 working days to ask the labour court for a providência cautelar de suspensão do despedimento (art. 386). If granted, it freezes the dismissal so your pay and contract continue while the main case runs.
3. 60 days — file the challengeYou have 60 days to lodge the impugnação judicial. For an individual dismissal that was communicated in writing, this starts with a simple electronic or paper form stating your opposition (Código de Processo do Trabalho, art. 98.º-C).
4. The case is decidedIf the dismissal is declared ilícito, the court orders the remedies below — back pay to the date of judgment, plus reinstatement or an in-lieu indemnity.

The 60-day limit is set by art. 387(2) of the Código do Trabalho. It is a caducidade period: it does not suspend or interrupt, and it counts from when you received the dismissal (or from the contract's termination date if that falls later). For an individually dismissed worker the challenge begins with a minimalist form — you simply declare that you oppose the dismissal; the employer then has to prove, in a motivação, that it was lawful. That reversal is a real advantage for the worker.

The suspension injunction (art. 386) is separate and faster. You do not have to file it — but if you do and win, the dismissal's effects are provisionally frozen, so the contract and your salary continue while the full case is fought out. Because the window is roughly five working days, this is the one that catches people out; if you think the dismissal is unlawful, this is a same-week decision, not a next-month one.

The remedies: back pay, compensation, reinstatement

If the court declares the dismissal ilícito, the effects are set out in arts. 389–391 of the Código do Trabalho. There are three moving parts, and you influence which combination applies.

Back pay — the retribuições intercalares under art. 390 — is the salary you would have earned between the dismissal and the court's decision. Amounts you earned in other work during that time, and unemployment benefit you received, can be deducted, so the net figure depends on how long the case takes and what you did meanwhile.

Reinstatement (art. 389) puts you back in the same job with your seniority and category preserved, as if the dismissal never happened. It is the worker's right to choose.

Indemnity in place of reinstatement (art. 391) is the alternative if you would rather not return. The court sets it between 15 and 45 days of base salary and seniority payments for each full year or fraction of service, judging by your pay and how serious the illegality was — and it can never be less than three months of base pay. In very small firms or for board-level roles the employer can sometimes ask the court to rule out reinstatement, but the higher indemnity then applies.

What to do this week if you were fired

1. Write down the date you received the written decision — it anchors every deadline.
2. Identify the ground and check the procedure against the table above. Was there a nota de culpa, or the consultation an economic dismissal needs?
3. Decide on the injunction fast — the ~5-working-day window for suspending the dismissal closes almost immediately.
4. File within 60 days — the impugnação form is short; missing the deadline forfeits the claim entirely.
5. Don't sign off on the severance as "accepted" if you intend to challenge.

This is exactly the kind of question CourtStairs is built for: it turns "was my firing legal, and what are my deadlines?" into a plain-language answer tied to the specific article of the Código do Trabalho or the Código de Processo do Trabalho behind it, in English or Portuguese, so you can open the Diário da República and confirm.

This is general information, not legal advice. Deadlines are short and strict, transitional and collective-agreement rules can vary the defaults, and the details of any one case matter — so confirm anything important against the primary source or a lawyer before you act.