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The newly enacted ‘Right to Retirement’ law in Portugal prohibits superiors from texting or e-mailing employees after work hours.
As domestic work is on the rise, labor laws in the country are being strengthened to regulate it. This law comes as a part of it. This is a change that will improve the balance between work and life.
Under the law, companies with more than 10 employees will have to pay fines if they contact their employees beyond the agreed working hours.
Rules will be introduced to allow employees with children to work without coming to the office.
Accordingly, employees will be allowed to work from their home indefinitely, without prior permission, until their children are 8 years old.
Not only that, but companies will have to pay extra electricity and internet bills for working from home.
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The law also includes measures to deal with the loneliness that employees face from working from home. Companies are expected to arrange occasional direct participation meetings to address this loneliness problem.
But the Portuguese parliament did not approve some aspects of the law. For example, after working hours, Parliament did not approve the ‘right to disconnect’ to place all work-related equipment.
“Working remotely will bring about significant changes, but it is important to streamline its growth,” Portuguese Minister of Labor and Social Security Ana Mendes Godinho told a news conference.
He hoped that a lot of foreigners would come to Portugal as labor security was further improved.
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“We consider Portugal to be one of the best places in the world for these digital nomads and long-distance workers to choose to live in. We want to pull them towards Portugal,” Godinho said.
Portugal also has a plan to issue temporary resident visas to attract entrepreneurs and those working independently.
There is a ‘digital nomadic village’ on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Here, there is free wifi, office desk facilities.
There are a few other countries that issue these visas, also known as ‘digital nomadic’ visas, instead of regular tourist visas. Barbados and Croatia are some of such countries.
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