If you read between the lines, it seems like this job definitely wasn't the right fit. Hence, they were probably in the right for letting you go. But they're definitely in the wrong for how they handled it. In particular, knowing that you moved to Portugal for the job, they should have given you severance sufficient to cover relocation back to Sweden.
> they were probably in the right for letting you go. They violated his three month contract. They are not just morally wrong, but legally so as well. If anything it sounds like they're pushing him around because they don't think he'll make the legal effort to get 1.5 months of pay.
Again, without knowing the contract, I can't say for sure, but what most likely happened was he was hired with a fixed term contract (Contrato Termo Certo), which is a kind of employment contract very common in Portugal. This doesn't mean he can't be fired for 3 months. There are various provisions for the company to do so (from probation period to lack of productivity or unfit for the job) but they do require some process (the employee has to be informed by writing, is entitled to some severance, etc). On this, and if the account is true is where the company maybe in more trouble. If he worked for 1 month and got 1.5 months of pay, that .5 maybe the severance he is entitled to (not sure about the values so I can't specify if that is correct or not)
As for the generality of the Portuguese employment law, you usually have 3 kinds of contracts:
- independent contractor/recibos verdes: This is usually a business to business contract, where the 'employee' has little rights regarding employment law except the ones provisioned in the contract itself. Employee also has to pay all taxes/social security. There has been some crack down on these as employers were abusing employees and avoiding paying taxes. There are similar provisions to this in the UK for example with their IR35, which means even if the contract is of this nature, they will be taxed as full-time employees.
- fixed term contract: An employment contract with a set end date (can be renewed for a certain amount of times). The usual rules apply regarding vacation, pay, firing processed etc. These regulations are law and while there is some margin to tweak the amounts, they can't be modified or you can't sign of your rights away.
- non-fixed term contract: This is what most countries have as standard employment contract but in Portugal it is a bit harder to come by. While things changed recently, up until a few years back, most employers didn't want to do this contracts since firing an employee in this cases is next to impossible without paying a huge settlement amount. So employers usually did fixed term contract with new employees, renew them for the allowed number (usually in total used to be no more than 18 months) and then either let them go (with no severance) or move them to this kind of contract.