Relatório de estágio na Caixa Geral de Depósitos

This report will describe the activities undertaken during my internship at the Personnel Department (DPE-UPE4.1) in Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), Lisbon, between September 22, 2014, and February 28, 2015. I consider that it is important to note from the outset i) that the subject of my training was suggested by my supervisor in the DPE and accepted by me; and ii) that the internship consisted essentially of carrying out research and information gathering into the different social systems that coexist within the bank and the application of each legal system in solving concrete situations of the CGD employees. The research and analysis of information was important not only for my study but for the CGD itself, as it enables the department to have such an important matter, full of specific characteristics, condensed into a single document, i.e. this report. This is a complex reality. The various welfare systems differ according to the contractual agreement linking the employee to the employer at the date when the labour contract is signed, and also the unique/singular characteristics of the CGD. In the early stage I started by trying to understand the financial institution and its organization and role and the department where I worked. So I analyzed the CGD Statutes and the legal measures that crystallized the scheme for its employees and I also researched its domestic and international operations. The first month was devoted to the research and analysis of such legislation to understand the creation of the CGD and its path to date. In the second and third months I studied the legal social systems that are applied to different groups of CGD workers. This period was quite important to identify and understand the differences between those regimes of CGD employees as well as the procedure inherent in each case. I highlighted the non-implementation of “the social protection regime of convergence” to the workers of this institution; the differences regarding the allocation of sickness subsidies paid to workers who belong to Social Security and CGA contributors, as well as the enforcement of internal rules to all the workers when a work-related accident happens.Then I focused on to assessing and examining external legislation and several internal regulations in order to obtain solutions to questions raised and situations involving by the workers, in order to understand how the DPE solves these situations. Over the last three months of internship, after this more theoretical work, I began the analysis of concrete situations involving employees carrying out their duties in Portugal and abroad. Some of these situations had been received by the department before the beginning of my internship and others over this period. When I was “working” in the DPE I analyzed “cases” that had been solved and some others without a final solution because they were still in courts. As for the last ones (new cases) I was able to follow their assessment and sometimes their outcome. Some of them became study cases for me. Over these five months of my internship, several cases were analyzed and discussed by legal experts of DPE in which I could participate. I always worked hard. I know that this action contributed to elucidate me about the treatment of the issues, and allowed me to have a direct contact with some workers and be part of a dynamic work team. For these reasons, my internship report is not merely descriptive of activities. It consists of an analysis of rules (legislation) and a regulatory framework of activities and it is also a description of several specific situations solved or in a solution process. Through this work I intend to make known the particular reality of a modern Portuguese financial institution not only because of its importance in our country but also such a large number of employees work here (in Portugal and abroad). I should add that throughout my internship I was allowed to attend conferences, within the scope of the bank in order to get a broader view of some issues related to the daily life of the DPE and the CGD. So, I participated in I Jornadas Bancárias and the Conferência Internacional do Contrato a Termo, given that the CGD is a bank and the DPE deals with legal and labour relations.

An agent-based simulator to estimate domestic energy use

Throughout recent years, there has been an increase in the population size, as well as a fast economic growth, which has led to an increase of the energy demand that comes mainly from fossil fuels. In order to reduce the ecological footprint, governments have implemented sustainable measures and it is expected that by 2035 the energy produced from renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar would be responsible for one-third of the energy produced globally. However, since the energy produced from renewable sources is governed by the availability of the respective primary energy source there is often a mismatch between production and demand, which could be solved by adding flexibility on the demand side through demand response (DR). DR programs influence the end-user electricity usage by changing its cost along the time. Under this scenario the user needs to estimate the energy demand and on-site production in advance to plan its energy demand according to the energy price. This work focuses on the development of an agent-based electrical simulator, capable of: (a) estimating the energy demand and on-site generation with a 1-min time resolution for a 24-h period, (b) calculating the energy price for a given scenario, (c) making suggestions on how to maximize the usage of renewable energy produced on-site and to lower the electricity costs by rescheduling the use of certain appliances. The results show that this simulator allows reducing the energy bill by 11% and almost doubling the use of renewable energy produced on-site.

A consagração dos naturais

“One cannot analyse a legal concept outside the economic and socio-cultural context in which it was applied” – such is the longstanding thesis of António Manuel Hespanha. I argue that Hespanha’s line of argument relative to legal concepts is also applicable, mutatis mutandis, to legal agents: the magistrates, advocates, notaries, solicitors and clerks who lived and exercised their professions in a given time and place. The question, then, is how to understand the actions of these individuals in particular contexts – more specifically in late 18th century and 19th century Goa. The main goal of the present thesis was to comprehend how westernized and Catholic Goan elite of Brahman and Chardó origin who provided the majority of Goan legal agents used Portuguese law to their own advantage. It can be divided into five key points. The first one is the importance of the Constitutional liberalism regime (with all the juridical, judicial, administrative and political changes that it has brought, namely the parliamentary representation) and its relations with the perismo – a local political and ideological tendency nurtured by Goan native Catholic elite. It was explored in the chapter 2 of this thesis. The second key point is the repeated attempts made by Goan native Catholic elite to implement the jury system in local courts. It was studied in the chapter 3. Chapter 4 aims to understand the participation of the native Catholic elite in the codification process of the uses and traditions of the indigenous peoples in New Conquests territory. The fourth key point is the involvement of those elites not only in the conflict of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions but also in the succession of the Royal House of Sunda. It was analyzed in the chapter 5. The functions of an advocate could be delegated to someone who, though lacking a law degree, possessed sufficient knowledge to perform this role satisfactorily. Those who held a special licence to practice law were known as provisionários (from provisão, or licence, as opposed to the letrados, or lettered). In the Goa of the second half of the 18th century and the 19th century, such provisionários were abundant, the vast majority coming from the native Catholic elite. The characteristics of those provisionários, the role played by the Portuguese letrados in Goa and the difficult relations between both groups were studied in the chapter 6.