Workers’ paradise? Portugal’s new teleworking law takes flak

LISBON, Portugal — Portugal’s new law on working from home makes the European Union country sound like a workers’ paradise.

Companies can’t attempt to contact their staff outside working hours. They must help staff pay for their home gas, electric and internet bills. Bosses are forbidden from using digital software to track what their teleworkers are doing.

There’s just one problem: The law might not work. Critics say the new rules are half-baked, short on detail and unfeasible. And they may even backfire by making companies reluctant to allow working from home at all.

As home working grew in recent years, workers’ “right to disconnect” — allowing staff to ignore work matters outside formal working hours — was adopted before the pandemic in countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium. It is now becoming the standard.

But Portugal is taking that concept a step further, by flipping the onus onto companies. “The employer has a duty to refrain from contacting the employee outside working hours, except in situations of force majeure,” meaning an unanticipated or uncontrollable event, states the new law.

But practical questions abound: Must staff be taken off company email lists when their shift finishes and then put back on when they start work again? What about Europeans who work in financial markets and need to know what’s going on in, say, Hong Kong, and have colleagues working in different time zones?

“The devil is always in the details ... but also in the implementation,” says Jon Messenger, a specialist on working conditions at the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency based in Geneva.