Portugal praised by international media for promoting “healthy balance between work and family life”
“Companies in Portugal will be prohibited from contacting workers for working hours and must report additional energy and communications costs under one of the most favorable European laws for the worker to regulate homeworking”, begins with explain the english newspaper Financial Times in an article published this Monday about the right to disconnect, which was approved last November 3 by the Assembly of the Republic. In other words, one of the amendments to the Labor Code that is based on the right to dismiss workers during rest periods, during which employers cannot contact them.
“The employer has the duty to refrain from contacting the employee during the rest period, except in cases of force majeure”, can be read in the PS proposal. “It is a serious offense to violate” the article in this article, explained the Socialists. It should be noted that, in the same article, there is a rule that states that “constitutes discriminatory action (…) any disadvantageous treatment, in terms of working conditions and professional development, given to a worker due to the fact of exercising the right established in the previous number” .
“Portugal has banned employers from sending text messages to employees after work. Could this happen in the US?” The Guardian in a text published on the same day. “Countries that protect people’s right to a healthy work-life balance are responding adequately to the modern work culture”, he continues, noting that “Portugal is not the only country to modernize its labor laws ; citizens of France, Spain, Belgium, Slovakia, Italy, Philippines, Argentina, India, etc. enjoy the “right to abstain” – or abstain, without punishment, from working and communicating with their employers during rest periods designated “, explains. It should be recalled that another novelty of this law is related to the promotion of face-to-face contacts between workers and with managers at intervals of no more than two months so that one can “work towards the reduction of worker isolation, promoting, with periodicity personalized in the telework agreement, or, in case of omission, at intervals of no more than two months, face-to-face contact with supervisors and other workers “according to the PS.
Although other international news organizations have covered this topic, such as CNN or the BBC, the first to pay attention to it was the US agency. Associated Press. “Portugal’s parliament passed new laws on work at home on Friday, introducing additional protection for employees who do their work outside company premises. COVID-19, said the socialist government, “advanced on 5 February November, implementing that the Executive” sees advantages “in working from home, but wants to adapt labor legislation to this regime. Therefore, “the regulations bring new penalties for companies that disturb the privacy of employees or their families and require them to compensate employees for expenses related to working at home.”
It is also a reference that these changes were satirized in the American television program The Daily Show, hosted by comedian Trevor Noah. Describing the right to disconnect as a “even gangsta” decision, he indicates that “a victory for workers in Portugal and in most of Europe is to make it illegal for the boss to contact each other from five in the afternoon. However, in America, a major labor victory is that now Amazon workers can choose which bottles, glass or plastic, they want to urinate in.”