Nuno Fox
When he was little he broke a lot of gravel and hauled a lot of stone into his father’s family business. Decades later, the heirs of DST (Domingos da Silva Teixeira) have multiplied the talents left to them and run a group that earns 700 million euros, and has an EBITDA (profits before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization) of 80 million euros.
Visiting the Innovators League, José Teixeira, the businessman from Braga who in recent years has distinguished himself by investing in the technical and cultural training of workers, says that the past helped him to put himself in other people’s shoes, to look for them “a better life, to seek better working conditions, with a lot of training, a lot of science, a lot of knowledge”.
Nuno Fox
Remember that companies are more than profit-generating machines and, therefore, the group only pays dividends in companies where workers have a stake in the capital. In others, “we live off salaries and invest what we earn to create more factories, create more industry, improve salaries and so on”.
If businesspeople want everything for themselves, they will only have workers who obey, not workers who create and add value, he considers. You can’t remember the last time you fired someone but you always want to know why the workers you hired want to leave the company. And he doesn’t like the climate of social tension that has arisen with the proposed revision of the Labor Code, which will culminate in a general strike. “It’s a pointless battle, leave the workers alone.”
Nuno Fox
Other ideas you might hear throughout the conversation
“We don’t want to be a kind of merchant of Venice in the construction industry. We want to take advantage of it to democratize”
“When I was a servant, we served the artist. I want to bring that taste back: saying I’m an artist and not a bricklayer, because words count”
“The cities are full of walls in Martim Moniz, in Bem Formoso. Architecture has to discuss this”
“If businesspeople are bulimic, if we want everything for ourselves, workers won’t work, they will just obey”
“It’s a pointless battle, leave the workers alone” [sobre as alterações ao Código do Trabalho e a greve geral]