New Law: Bosses Can’t Text Employees After Office Hours In This Country

Lisbon: Regular work hours often go beyond the stipulated time for those employed in private sector. As the remuneration increases, so does the demand from corporate managements.

This is about to change in Portugal, where a batch of labour laws were passed recently to attract more ‘digital nomads’ to the country, Associated Press reported.

According to the new laws, employers will be fined for calling digital workers after work hours. Also, companies have to pay for work-from-home expenses like internet and electricity.

However, employees were not granted the right to disconnect, or turn off work devices and messaging services after official work hours

Like Portugal, some other European countries like Croatia, Greece, and Spain offer virtual work visas.

Bermuda, Antigua and Costa Rica have also announced plans to offer digital nomad visas during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing long-term stays up to two years.

The digital nomad concept has become very popular over the past year, post the global coronavirus pandemic. So much so that Merriam-Webster added it to the dictionary last month.

Defined as someone who performs his/her professional job entirely over the internet while travelling.

“We consider Portugal one of the best places in the world for these digital nomads and remote workers to choose to live in, we want to attract them to Portugal. The pandemic has accelerated the need to regulate what needs to be regulated,” Portugal’s minister of Labour and Social Security Ana Mendes Godinho said at a Web summit conference in Lisbon.