Portugal makes it illegal to message employees after work; seeks to attract digital nomads

This is part of a broad body of laws intended to help remote workers.

The Portuguese Parliament has passed new labor laws to give workers a healthier work-life balance. and to attract digital nomads to your country. Employers could face penalties for contacting employees outside of working hours, according to the new legislation.

Digital nomads take advantage of the flexibility of remote work to live traveling. Ecuador aims to be the first South American country to issue visas for digital nomads, to also capture part of that job offer.

The new Portuguese laws, approved on November 7, try to keep pace with the expansion of work at home after the heaviest of the coronavirus pandemic, according to statements by the ruling party.

Other measures include have the employer pay the excess of the household billssuch as electricity and heating. There is also discussion about preventing home monitoring, as well as ensuring that workers meet with their bosses every two months, to combat isolation.

Not all the designed proposals got the approval of the parliament, by the way. The “right to disconnect” (to turn off work devices) did not get the necessary votes.

“The pandemic has accelerated the need to regulate what needs to be regulated,” said Labor and Social Security Minister Ana Mendes Godinho during the Lisbon Web Summit this month.

“Teleworking can be the change we were hoping for, if we take advantage of its advantages and reduce the points against it. We consider Portugal to be one of the best places in the world for digital nomads to visit and remote workers to choose to live, and we want them to come, ”said the official.

The unemployment rate in that European country decreased six tenths in the third quarter of 2021, with respect to the previous one, to stand at 6.1% with 318,700 people, according to data published this Wednesday by the Portuguese National Institute of Statistics. (I)

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