As a portuguese, while this looks good on paper, it won't contribute whatsoever to our current situation.
We're a country where the nationals earn like shit - probably one of the worst avg and median incomes in whole EU - and are choked to the brink of passing out by high taxes.
Our political class is exchanging our young and bright over to foreign pensioners, and now apparently, foreign remote workers.
Just so you understand the status quo: people were being pushed out of big cities for years, and now with remote work even more people are being pushed out of medium sized cities in the interior, because everyone wants to live in the country side or by the shore.
We're fucked in every direction by high rents, high real-estate, high taxes, high energy costs, yet our incomes remain shit.
In 20 years you'll probably see the news headline:
"Workers in Portugal now must work until the age of 75 so they could see a healthier work-life balance under new labor laws!"
I live partially in Germany and Portugal, as I have roots in both country. You are right, the average salaries are a joke and the living costs are sky rocketing. However, you have a great and stable society, a really specific market, good universities and sometimes I think what is missing is initiative. The young people prefer to go abroad than try to innovate in Portugal. For example, almost all disrupting startups in Portugal are lead by Brazilians. Sometimes I have the impression that we all forgot about our resilience (well described by Camoes and Pessoa).
You're 100% right - though I don't think it's easy to risk it in Portugal, neither it's praised.
I think our worst problem is that the majority seems to be ok giving the appearance that they're ok in life. I can't blame them, like some said: we have good weather and good food... low cost flights allows us to travel and post on social media showing we're going places... so in reality it seems like everything is ok.
Yet it's not.
Agostinho da Silva might say we're fulfilling our destiny of being "vadios" and artists, since he claims that's a way of living very rooted in our culture, waiting for machines to come do the work for ourselves. If that time will ever come, will be pros.
I tried my own venture, and failed. In fact I've tried many things and failed at them. And I do wonder sometimes, what's the point?
I always fold to play guitar, sketch, and have laughs with friends while we eat a home made meal.
Otoh a society that values leisure and social cohesion than cold efficient capital making sounds like a much more fulfilling place to fill out a few score trips around the sun than waking up at 60 with no hobbies in a cold dead mansion.
Maybe the solution is just to go abroad if you find you can’t not be getting your excitement from taking business risks
The reason you get the impression that countries like Portugal or Greece prioritize leisure is that you spend your vacations there and mostly interact with the wealthier residents. The relaxed Greek pensioner who speaks fluent English may appear to be middle class by your standards, but is actually a member of the elite. The actual average Greek is the one who is busting their butts off mopping the pristine facade of your Santorini Airbnb.
Portugal actually has one of the longer working hours in the EU. Despite the reputation that Greeks are lazy, they actual work the longest. If the upper classes of these nations worked harder, they would create more higher-skill jobs for the average resident, so they wouldn't have to resort to working menial jobs for longer hours.
I think there’s a level on which a chill society doesn’t feel as much collective need to produce as much, though your point is very valid as well. A 11 hour workday that involves a hammock and a nap for instance. Or, a crazy idea, if one can provide some security for themselves with a more basic job. This isn’t really what exists, it’s usually richer countries with more leisure. But not always
In the end is about how much you want to sacrifice. Put some money aside, invest your free time, believe in an idea, but in the end: Put in the Work! Specially in our branch. A full stack developer earns in average EUR 1.500/month in Portugal. Work remotely from Portugal, have a side gig and make it happens.
Coming from Poland (theoretically a country with lower salaries than Portugal) this strikes me as super low - you can easily earn 2-3x that working remotely for English-speaking contracting companies, and way way more if you try to get a job at a remote first tech company.
Steep bell curve for everyone beneath them to be in eastern europe while Portugal is surrounded by or in close proximity to the highest percentile earners in Western Europe
I was born in Brazil but I am currently in process to try to get a Portuguese citizenship (my ancestors are portuguese and raised me to be portuguese, I was only born in Brazil).
I am considering moving to portugal even, but I must say I was shocked when I saw that income taxes for me would be 45%? And I was thinking I pay too much in Brazil at 27.5%...
Are portuguese services really, really good at least? (in Brazil the services are not very good, we pay taxes + private education, private healthcare, private security, and the government expects private sector to build railways, etc... hell, some places people have private army too, with some parts of the country you being safe only if you bribe the army itself or hire mercenaries...)
>Are portuguese services really, really good at least?
That's problem: they're not. Or better yet, they're very inefficient and rely too much on humans. Our public Health Care Service (SNS) is praised in some circles - but at the cost of poor wages and overworked staff. Not to mention the interior is starting to crumble with no people to make up for it.
> my ancestors are portuguese and raised me to be portuguese, > I was only born in Brazil
You are 100% Brazilian. Your ancestors, knew a Portugal from 100 years ago. It is the same with the japanese Dekasegi.
Portugal is awesome, IMO the best country in the world, but you will definitely have a lower life standard there. If you are married, expect a lot of "saudades de casa".
Taxes are extremely high and that, in and of itself, is a huge issue but things are actually much worse.
Want to use a road? You pay. Want to get some financial documents you actually need for work? You pay. Want a doctor to see you at a hospital? You pay.
> and are choked to the brink of passing out by high taxes
What are property taxes like over there?
I'm suspicious that your problem is the same as California, New Zealand, Canada and everyone else: deep tax cuts for long time landowners which everyone else has to make up for.
Calm down. Yes, some things are shit in Portugal. €0.2246 per kWh is not cheap but it is not crazy high.
"Renewables account for 72% of Portugal's consumption in 5-mo 2021" May be important for the future
I know real estate prices in Portugal are crazy. 500k in a city and you get a golden visa. Hence every decent apartment is 500k or more. In a country were the minimum salary is around 500 euros.
Look the the future. Portugal can and is attracting an nearly infinite supply of young people from Brazil, Angola, Mozambique. The future is good. Likely better than Italy.
Property prices aren't so crazy - a friend of mine pays €400 a month in a nice part of Costa da Caparica for a 2 bed, another bought a great place for under €200k in Cacilhas.
For under €500k you can get something like this https://www.idealista.pt/imovel/31578168/ more than decent in such a desirable location in the centre of the capital..
The minimum wage is so low because more than 50% of the workforce didn't finish school https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/50-of-portuguese-betwee...
There are plenty of Portuguese people smarter than I commanding nice salaries, yes not as high as elsewhere in Europe but the quality of life and cost of living I believe make up for it.
Another thing (besides high taxes and low wages) US leftists would like to copy from Portugal is complete legalization of all drugs, including the hard/addictive ones. I'd be curious to know from a local how well that worked (if at all) over the extended period of time.
We didn't legalize drugs, we decriminalized them - basically a drug addict wasn't considered a criminal, but someone who's sick and needs help.
It worked wonders, we had a heroin epidemic that vanished in the course of 10-15 years. There are still addicts of course, but they're being followed by doctors, offered replacement drugs, etc.
Just to contrast: you used to see people injecting themselves on their dicks in the street all over Lisbon, yet more prevalent in some neighborhoods. Such sights are long gone.
> injecting themselves on their dicks in the street all over Lisbon
That's how it is today in San Francisco and a few other places. Are they actually gone, or are they just injecting themselves in the dick at a taxpayer funded injection site?
Those pensioners aren't the ones who will pay Social Security in the future mate. Portuguese politicians are digging a hole that we won't be able to recover from - just so you know the age of retirement keeps increasing with no end in sight.
Yes, fine if those pensioners move to Portugal permanently. If they're just living there during the summer then the place is dead for the rest of the year, and locals are priced out of staying there.
>> Our political class is exchanging our young and bright
>...who would be unemployed.
presumably the "young and bright" that are moving out of portugal aren't doing so they can be unemployed in another country. if anything they're retaining the unemployed/unemployable young adults but offloading the employable young adults.
This is a product of socialism without protections. Put simply, you have high taxes to redistribute wealth. Unfortunately, the government takes their cut. As government becomes increasingly large / naturally corrupt that cut becomes larger.
The wealthy can leave and gain more else-where and many leave. Increasing the burden. If you don't have heavy border controls, people who are less advantaged move to the country to gain from the social system. You'll also have remote workers move into cities because it is cheaper than their home region. This drives up costs in cities, but isn't enough tax revenue to offset the loss in wealthy people leaving, as it's highly focused. You'll also have people investing and buying property, which also drives up the costs.
At the end of the day, if you want to improve life, you have to focus on
(a) strict immigration policies (reducing pressure from immigrants)
True. I’m probably paying 60% of my income in tax living in Amsterdam. I could easily relocate to somewhere like Chicago or Austin, and pay way less and have cheaper living expenses, but I’ve seen enough of American cities to know I find their wealth divide so cruel I personally consider it a crime against humanity. It’s just plain depressing to live in a society like that.
The crime being the existence of poor people? Europe is way worse on these fronts, they just hide their poor people better and put them in the suburbs.
Where have you been in Europe or the US? I have family on both sides of the Atlantic and know both continents quite well from personal experiences. The crime is letting people die from preventable illness because of unwillingness to provide universal healthcare, and a segregated system that makes higher education difficult to attain and keeps poor people in poverty.
On your second point I wholeheartedly disagree, I’ve been in small villages in Serbia, and I know people from there very well. I also grew up 10 minutes from the Michigan boarder and have friends and family there too. From my experience, the poorest people in Serbia are less at risk of abject poverty and dying from preventable diseases than the poorest in Michigan. Sure if you look at the average salary for someone in Michigan vs someone in Serbia, Serbia is way lower, but if you actually look at quality of life factors for the bottom 10% of both those places I’d bet Serbia pulls way ahead.
Edit: and I just use Serbia as an example because it’s one of the poorest countries in Europe and I still think it’s better than a lot of US states in how it helps its poor. When you look at health, safety, and educational outcomes of middle income and rich European countries they are often far ahead of the US averages. Christ, not everything is about maximizing GDP. Look at the average lifespan of an EU citizen that’s almost 10 years longer than an American citizen.
I'm an EU citizen as well as an American one. If you go to the suburbs in the outskirts of Paris, you will see what I am talking about. (the so-called "banlieue")
The US is going to have more obvious poverty also because they are more accepting of immigrants from impoverished countries.
> Look at the average lifespan of an EU citizen that’s almost 10 years longer than an American citizen.
Laughably false. A 10 year difference would be ridiculous!
You can look up everything that I am talking about. The (non-European) immigrant communities in Europe are incredibly poor, but kept out of sight because European development models involve affluent city centers and pushing minorities out to the suburbs, rather than the reverse which occurs in the US.
The US certainly has problems with these sorts of things, but headlines like:
> I'm an EU citizen as well as an American one. If you go to the suburbs in the outskirts of Paris, you will see what I am talking about. (the so-called "banlieue")
I’ve been there, thanks, and it’s not nearly as bad as the poor parts of Chicago or Detroit where I’ve also been. You’re completely detached from reality if you think otherwise. Have you even actually been to a poor area of a large America city? You’re also about 10x more likely to be murdered in those cities than in Paris.
> The US is going to have more obvious poverty also because they are more accepting of immigrants from impoverished countries.
Bullshit, there are basically zero first generation immigrants in Detroit. All Americans pretty much. Unless you don’t consider oppressed grandchildren of slaves as Americans?!
>> Look at the average lifespan of an EU citizen that’s almost 10 years longer than an American citizen.
Laughably false. A 10 year difference would be ridiculous!
Fair, I was more thinking Italy specifically because I’m half Italian, but the average European still lives three years longer than the average America, which is pathetic considering the wealth in America.
> You can look up everything that I am talking about. The (non-European) immigrant communities in Europe are incredibly poor, but kept out of sight because European development models involve affluent city centers and pushing minorities out to the suburbs, rather than the reverse which occurs in the US.
If you’re selective about data like that, I can be selective about data too, and show you how black and brown oppressed communities in America have way worse social outcomes than the average American. What you’re saying about Europe is no different in America, it’s actually more extreme in America and more violent because of lax gun control.
Yeah, you’ve definitely never worked in a major midwestern city, because stuff like this still happens all the time, the racist have learned to just not be blatant about it. All you have to do is look at the C level executives at most American companies to see it. I’ve seen it first hand when I’ve tried to hire non white people in Canada and it was a battle for me. I have no idea why you think this is exclusive to France. I get that Bay Area companies are sometime more progressive, but companies in cities like Huston or Chicago, not so much, there’re still plenty of racists.
We tend to talk about "socialism" in Portugal, but few countries that I know are more neoliberal than Portugal. Almost everything is private or is managed by private companies. Portugal is one of the few countries which exchanges visa for money. Our approach to Uber and Airbnd was until 2019, pretty liberal. I'm not saying that is right or wrong, just that even though the people vote for socialism, what we get in the end is neoliberalism.
Not correct. Locals get socialism. Foreigners ultra capitalism. Portugal is a tax haven but only for foreigners. We exchange EU visas and tax isentions for money to sustain the socialist ideology.
> We exchange EU visas and tax isentions for money to sustain the socialist ideology.
What? The Golden Visa program was created by the liberal government of Passos Coelho. It's legalized corruption (the head of a government agency was even arrested in connection with this a while back), putting upward pressure on the housing market, than the money earned by the visas themselves.
> This is a product of socialism without protections. Put simply, you have high taxes to redistribute wealth. Unfortunately, the government takes their cut. As government becomes increasingly large / naturally corrupt that cut becomes larger.
To blame this on socialism proves you don't know the history of Portugal.
50 years is enough to go from undeveloped to developed, you can't really blame what happened back then for what the state is now. Under these 50 years Portugal didn't make any progress at all, it is still just as economically behind the main European powers as it was back then.
Uh, no a disadvantage from 50 years ago will absolutely show up 50 years later. Indeed, much of the reason Portugal remains behind can be traced back to further than that.
If you have a whole generation only recently retiring that wasn't educated because your state didn't fund schools, that is going to drag on your economy even to today.
Kinda just sounds like you don't know what you are talking about.
We can see now that without import controls corporations are going to chase slave-like labor around the globe until there isn't another country left to go to. I'm guessing everyone is against worker exploitation. What else is the answer? Globalization circumvents any wins for human rights made locally.
There are a few other interesting things mentioned in the article:
> Employers are also forbidden from monitoring their employees while they work at home.
I'm wondering what that includes - any software that tracks mouse movement, applications used etc? Or is it limited in its scope? Anyway, sounds like a win and I hope other countries do that too.
> However, a proposal to include the so-called "right to disconnect" - the legal right to switch off work-related messages and devices outside office hours - was rejected by Portuguese MPs.
I don't understand this - so employer can't contact me but I can't disable my work phone? Sounds contradictory
> [parents] now have the right to work from home without having to arrange it in advance with their employers
Another win, though I'm wondering about the scope - who does it apply to? All office workers? Is there some definition of jobs where the work can be done remotely without limitations (e.g. having to use some machines available only at the work place)?
> Companies must also now contribute to expenses that workers have incurred as a result of switching to remote working
That's cool. I've seen companies already doing it in The Netherlands, but I don't know if it's regulated in any way, for now it seems companies come up with some arbitrary numbers between 40eur and 70eur a month.
All in all, it's hard to say how some of these rules will be implemented and enforced, but I like the direction it's going. Portugal becomes one of top places to attract remote workers in Europe with it's low (for now) prices, friendly taxes, great climate and good level of English spoken in the cities.
>> However, a proposal to include the so-called "right to disconnect" - the legal right to switch off work-related messages and devices outside office hours - was rejected by Portuguese MPs.
> I don't understand this - so employer can't contact me but I can't disable my work phone? Sounds contradictory
I was probably deemed unnecessary to write this down in law since the company is already forbidden to contact employees outside of work hours.
Now we just need to be competitive enough to have decent wages.
Else those remote works are just going to increase even more housing costs (both rent/real estate), and keep funneling cash to what has proven to be our greatest weakness: tourism.
> Else those remote works are just going to increase even more housing costs (both rent/real estate)
I'm not sure that's true. Remote work does not require workers to be at commute distance from anywhere, and it only requires them to have a reliable internet connection. Everyone I know who switched to remote work moved out of city centers and into places where both rent was lower and quality of life was higher.
What exactly leads you to believe that fleeing tech hubs and urban centers leads to higher rents?
>Everyone I know who switched to remote work moved out of city centers and into places where both rent was lower and quality of life was higher.
That's precisely my point, they're raising rent prices where rent was cheap - remember that construction isn't following growing demand, the supply of houses is the same.
>What exactly leads you to believe that fleeing tech hubs and urban centers leads to higher rents?
In the case of Portugal it's not tech hubs that are the cause for urban centers to have high rents, that's purely Tourism in our context. AirBnBs wiped a bunch of the supply, then pensioners and rich people that want to have houses in an European capital without paying London/Paris prices.
Hell for 500k they can buy an house and even get a EU passport after 5 years. Where else can you get this deal?
If companies can’t monitor employees working from home how do they protect against malware? Does every employee now bear responsibility for keeping their system secure? If they cause a data breach because they didn’t update their system could they be liable?
>If companies can’t monitor employees working from home how do they protect against malware?
WTF ? if you as a company want protection againt malware then give me a super locked down work machine, where I can't install shit and updates will be done automatically?
If I work remote and I am using my own hardware then fuck you, I don't install your malware on my own machine so you can check my personal stuff.
So give me a lockeddown work machine if I have some super secret project that I work on. If you don't trust me and think I will screenshot your secrets then maybe is better we end this. I work from home for more then 10 years, it is all based on trust and progress tracking, but I don't work with super secret stuff, just the average proprietary SPAs(or desktop apps in the past).
What does monitoring have to do with malware? IT departments can setup automatic updating so employee equipment fetches and installs updates from the departments servers, and the "service" running on the employees machine doesn't have to send out monitoring data in order to facilitate this.
Or is it essential to monitor the employee in order to prevent malware for some reason I'm too inexperienced to see?
We have some software that monitors all network connections. I assume it’s for DLP and perhaps identifying suspicious traffic. As far as I know, management doesn’t use it for anything more than that. But it’s certainly a form of monitoring, even if they’re not using it to enforce a virtual “butts in seats” policy.
> Building a healthy remote working culture could also bring other benefits to Portugal, Mendes Godinho said, in the form of foreign remote workers seeking a change of scenery.
> "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," she told the Web Summit audience.
Portugal has form in this regard. If it sets out to do this at a national level, it will likely actually deliver.
It has already succeeded in making itself a great place for other nationals to retire to, for example. Portugal has deliberately arranged its tax system to attract pensioners, and done big sales pushes.
And it works. Lots of Swedish pensioners, for example, receive a Swedish state pension but spend that money in their new retirement home in Portugal.
Yeah, and now Sweden is/was considering limiting this as it considers Portugal a tax haven for their nationals. This (and previous) government can suck balls. They don't give a shit about the actual portuguese living here. High tax rates, shitty public services, but if they can attract any foreign money to look good, fuck the portuguese.
And don't get me started on how these foreigners that get tax exempt status drive up prices of everything here (ps: no problem with foreigners per se, just the ones that get special tax status). Had French and Italian people here literally tell me that what they save in taxes with these schemes basically pays for the house, so they don't mind paying more for the houses (I worked with some real estate companies)
Finland even complained that some double taxation laws were depriving the Finish state of taxes, and then Portugal didn't collect them either, creating a loophole. They will start to collect them anyway from their retirees.
> (...) nationals get one of the highest tax rates in Europe[0] and foreigners get a tax haven!
Why is this bad? If foreigners don't move to Portugal then they contribute zero in taxes and to the economy. If the Portuguese government convinces people to move to Portugal with tax benefits, they will pay taxes and spend their income in the local economy.
It's great for Portuguese Treasury, Real Estate investors and the Hospitality Industry. But terrible for everyone else living in Portugal.
Foreign buyers have driven the housing market well above the purchasing power of locals, who still have one of the lowest salaries in Europe specially when adjusted to cost of living.
For perspective, Portuguese minimum wage is 600 euros with a mode at around 1k per month (pre-tax).
> It's great for Portuguese Treasury, Real Estate investors and the Hospitality Industry. But terrible for everyone else living in Portugal.
Why do you believe that? I mean, is no one working in the hospitality or constructions industry, and is no one benefiting from public spending?
> Foreign buyers have driven the housing market well above the purchasing power of locals, who still have one of the lowest salaries in Europe specially when adjusted to cost of living.
If there is foreign investment in real estate increasing supply and in the process creating jobs and tax revenue, and if there is an increase in demand for this specific market segment, isn't there a net benefit to society? And why do you assume that low-wage workers would be in the market for high-end housing in tourism centers if not for these foreign investors?
> For perspective, Portuguese minimum wage is 600 euros with a mode at around 1k per month (pre-tax).
A quick Google search points out that Portugal offers golden visas to real estate investors who spend more than €500k on a home[1]. That's hardly the same market segment being serving the demand of most citizens of western Europe. Why is this being spun as a "they're taking our jobs"-kind of propaganda?
Indeed, the main issue is the earnings stagnation that Portuguese have experienced following post-2008. For perspective, many of the EU members that were behind the iron curtain have already surpassed Portugal in terms of PPP.
This loss in buying power is further exacerbated by the assymetry in housing costs precipitated by 'short-stay accomodation' Tourism and foreign pensioners driving up gentrification.
The golden visa argument from OP is non-sense. Despite the media controversy in the EU regarding Portugal and Cyprus golden visas, in Portugal these visas accounted for less than 17k families that actually settled in Portugal.
This shouldn't be an example to anyone. This isn't a real measure, wasn't thought or anything. This is a law made by politicians who are in campaign for the election in january.
Does this really help anyone? Most of the laws this government made didn't help anyone, at all. They just make the people's lives worse with their "good intentions".
Just a reminder that Portugal has some of the lowest wages in Europe, minimum wage is 600 Euro/month. Strict laws to protect workers is great until there are no evil employers left to employ anyone.
How do you even get this number? Even if I only count actual EU member (exclude Norway) that have numbers for 2020 Portugal ends up 15th, when Ireland and Italy publish their data it will be 17th.
Also is this purchasing power adjusted? If not probably it’s even lower since East European countries tend to have lower cost of living.
presumably switching the units to "Purchasing power standard (PPS)" does this? If we do that, and use 2019 data (to get a more complete dataset), we find that portugal is 21 out of 32 countries (including non-EU countries, too lazy to exclude them, and excluding iceland and uk because they have no data).
600e minimum sounds good when you live in a country also in Europe where the average is 500e, and that average is fake because there are a lot unregistered workers working illegally for smaller amounts.
here it is 400-500 euros for 1 bedroom apartment in the city center. and to buy 1 square meter is 2500-3000euros in centrish locations. which is 5-6times the average salary. compute that.
I'm sorry, are you saying that Portugal's public services/safety nets are inferior to the US's? I don't know much about them, but I seem to recall that you provide free treatment to drug addicts instead of just throwing them in jail.
Workplaces not bugging employees after hours is a great rule of thumb, but blanket rules don't leave room for people to use their judgement to resolve (hopefully very rare) legitimate emergencies and problems.
It's probably tied to their actual work agreement/contract.
If one of your explicit work requirements is to be on-call, then it's likely fine. That way employees can also argue that they should get paid for that time as well (and usually, on-call agreements also have compensation rules as well).
If you can refuse the on-call agreement and still keep your job, then it is okay. Otherwise, it is an option for employers to take away their employees' free time as they wish.
The cost of my time as an employee is not linear. Just because I am selling 8 hours of my time for X money, doesn't meant I would be happy to sell 16 hours for 2X money. And if I am taking a week of a vacation, it means I want to relax and walk somewhere in nature and be left alone. If you want someone available 365 days a year, hire two people.
> However, a proposal to include the so-called "right to disconnect" - the legal right to switch off work-related messages and devices outside office hours - was rejected by Portuguese MPs.
I genuinely don’t get this. It seems completely backwards.
Surely your boss should have the right to contact you, but you should have the right not to answer until your working hours recommence?
Is Portugal deciding that the very act of sending a message creates some kind of coercive pressure to work?
If so, why did they decide against the “right to disconnect”?
The problem as I see it is that it can put you at an unfair disadvantage to your team-mates who might choose to reply to your boss, or even do that "urgent thing" that your boss wants. Now you're suddenly the employee who chose not to "dedicate" extra 15 mins of your time to that "important" project. There should not be this kind of competition outside of working hours. Free time and family life should be protected.
I don’t buy it. This law doesn’t prevent competition outside working hours. The employee who wants to be seen to go “above and beyond” doesn’t need a time-specific prompting message to decide to work an extra 15 minutes.
The boss can easily make it known that those extra 15 minutes would be rewarded, either by dropping an email at 4:59pm, or using management clichés like “going the extra mile” and “taking one for the team”, or worse, manipulative non-verbal techniques that give advantage to in-groups and create barriers to out-groups.
> I suspect the real problem is exactly here not on large companies.
Small companies usually can't risk burning out their staff - for large companies, churn is priced in everywhere, but a small company can easily run aground when the wrong employee leaves.
This amendment targets precisely large companies who abuse churn to save money.
It’s not about “risking burning out the employees”. Small companies simply don’t have a chain of command and employees are taking on so many mission-critical things at once that employers need them to be constantly available.
I worked at a startup as an engineer and was the most technical person at the company. My personal life was not respected by the CEO because I was the only one who could navigate the 2am calls with the overseas manufacturers. I ended up quitting my job because of that, but someone more desperate for work than me would have probably taken that abuse for a lot longer, at the detriment of their mental health.
I read the linked article with the feeling: "Ok, that's not for Portuguese. They want to attract remote workers, to live in Portugal, not to retain Portuguese people". Tom Bateman, isn't Portuguese. Less than 25% of Portuguese work force, worked from home during lockdown. This number will decrease, as soon as "covid is gone". Therefore I fail to see where this rules will help Portuguese people.
''However, a proposal to include the so-called "right to disconnect" - the legal right to switch off work-related messages and devices outside office hours - was rejected by Portuguese MPs.''
In Germany you - the employee - have to inform the workplace of sick leave before a certain time. And you're liable if you don't. But I'm sure that nobody will fine you for asking if someone that is sick that didn't report it.
Some of these comments here are just strawman arguments.
Well then you need to make sure it's covered by your contract with the off-duty workers. If it's covered by the contract then you have nothing to worry about with this law anyway. If it isn't tough luck.
Most countries already had rules about this. The thing with rules and laws is that they only matter when employees actually legally enforce them. When employees are scared of their employers it's generally fuckall for employers anyway.
The GP's comment is about what the employer does next. So, you as an employee inform the workplace that you're sick, as is required. Can the workplace now contact your (off-duty) colleagues to ask if someone can take over your shift? I would say that is a reasonable thing for an employer to do when faced with a scheduling emergency.
Everyone will try to justify their need to send messages as 'legitimate'. I imagine with this law that communication will become more proactive. If you need to solve a problem, do it earlier than later. If it is an emergency, than have an actual plan laid out.
There is already a very simple solution to solve being "on call": pay the damn person for the hours they need to be ready to answer the phone. That's how Doctors and Firefighters (and developers!) do in places I lived.
If I need to be sober or awake, or can't put my phone on mute... well, then I'm obviously on the clock.
I also don't mind my company texting or calling for emergencies, but babysitting the system for free on PagerDuty like some SV companies ask to is incredibly stupid.
News reporting tends to leave out nuances. We need to see the text of the regulation to see if it actually has exceptions for situations like that. (Or rather, someone who speaks Portuguese needs to see it.)
Is it annoying? I don't think this article goes into enough depth to drawn any conclusions, let alone to conclude that the law was written to be as onerous as possible in common situations like these.
there's a saying that your lack of planning is not my emergency. but yes of course it's not black and white. there can be situations when you need to contact people.
I agree. But there are alot of posts in society that need to be manned. I don't see how that is solvable if you can't contact off duty workers.
Even if you have buffer extra on-duty workers you hit the long tail at some point. And I don't see how there could be standby extras for more unique posts.
So often I want to ask a question to someone, but not disturb them in their off hours. It is not urgent enough to keep them up at night, it is urgent enough to me needing an answer the next morning. Emails have become too formal for most people now, so I don't like sending them unless absolutely necessary. This is especially true for those working across timezones or night owls like me.
Now, my ADHD low working memory brain would love to queue these messages and forget about them. Rather than cluttering my todo list ( big no-no) or even worse keeping them in my head for an extra 12 hours.
It seems to be trivial to implement and I am honestly surprised it isn't a feature already.
So often I want to ask a question to someone, but not disturb them in their off hours.
I just send the message anyway, and I expect it to be read whenever they log back on to work. I would not expect any message, sent during off-hours, to be received immediately by the recipient.
I was about to quickly type "email" but you did address that. However what about fixing the email problem?
A slack message can be an email without modification. There are also template footers if that's what you mean about formal
I remember a person responding to slack messages at 2am not because she wanted to but because their boss was pressuring everyone to respond immediately, while telling people that they just make a choice not to respond outside of office hours. If you didn't respond in slack they would follow up with a WhatsApp message.
Slack has now integrated message scheduling, but before that there used to be addons to do that. There is a big difference between you choosing to do something and a toxic startup culture where the boss thinks it's part of the grind and shames people when they're not onboard.
What do you mean? All you have to do is close Slack / log out of it or turn on DnD. All of your messages will be sitting there waiting for when you open it next time.
I've been living in Portugal for 3 years now. I'm from the UK, I'm not tax-exempt, I speak basic Portuguese, I live rurally in Central Portugal, I mostly socialise with other foreigners.
I'm also a foreigner commenting on a diverse country into which I only have a narrow view. My experience may not be representative.
Bearing all that in mind, here is a random collection of my experiences for those who are interested:
EMPLOYMENT
There isn't much work here for foreigners. Definitely not much skilled work, but there is occasional low-skilled manual work involving working on the land, construction etc. This kind of work is paid at about €6/hour. Many of the foreigners I know do remote work (language teaching, translation, graphical work).
There also isn't much work here for locals, but with an additional spin. When I first arrived here the land I own was very overgrown and needed a lot of work done. I made a conscious effort to try to employ local young-ish people to help, but the work was very unreliable in a variety of ways (quality, reliability, people getting into fights and feuds). I've come to the rough conclusion that all the young locals who can leave this area have left (for the cities, or UK/France), and everyone who remains are those who could not leave for whatever reason. I don't blame them, especially as I know some of them were dealt a really crappy hand.
The result is that as an employer it is hard to find good people. I know this doubly now as I have also started an ISP here. We go to the local startup accelerator and ask if there is anyone who we can hire to help us with marketing, and nothing. They've gone to Lisbon, improved their marketing skills, and not come back (because why would they)
In the end we use something like UpWork and hire people in Lisbon/Porto to do the work for us. Thereby sending more money to the cities.
BUSINESS
I think there are an increasing number of businesses who's customers are 95% foreigners. I know a Portuguese guy who sells firewood who says as much. I run an ISP and it is definitely the case.
LAND PRICES
I'm broadly aware that land prices are going up around here. Foreigners that come here mostly want to live on land, outside the villages. Typically this land has not be maintained for a long time because the owners become old, decided to stop farming it, and open a shop in the village instead (as the previous owner of my land did). The locals generally prefer to live in the villages. Yes there will be overlap, but my intuition says that rural-land-prices and village-house-prices are not rising at the same rate.
GENERAL ATTITUDES
As long as you speak some Portuguese, the locals are happy to have you (at least from what I can tell). Be nice, be friendly, always help someone out if you can (even if you're busy), and it seems to be fine.
Most of all, take care of the land. Many of the locals remember how the area looked 50 years ago and are sad to see it become an overgrown wilderness (esp in forest fire season). When I'm cleaning up the road-facing part of my land, every single person that comes past gives me a big smile and a thumbs up. Seeing those fruit trees producing again, rather than being full of brambles, starts to bring the area back to life.
The older people seem to respect practical skills and actually doing the work. I think they have seen a generation of "druggards" (AFAIK, drug-taking drop-outs) not really contributing anything. So they respect people who come here and actually do the work themselves.
LANGUAGE
People under the age of 40 typically speak English as a second language, people over 40 (ish) typically speak French as a second language.
When I first moved here it was normal to go into a shop/cafe etc and you would have to speak Portuguese (unlike Lisbon/Porto, where English is somewhat standard). That has been changing a bit over the last few years as more and more foreigners come to this area. Shops increasingly try to ensure they have someone on staff with good English. (no value judgement either way from me)
Portuguese people will acknowledge that Portuguese is a very hard language, but they'll also point out that you can get free classes in the local city. I interpret this as, "It's hard, but you gotta at least try"
FOREIGNER TYPES
I see three kinds of foreigners moving to this area: retirees, hippies, and professionals. The last category is where I am, and it is the smallest category, but it is steadily growing. We typically move here with some remote/passive income stream and split our time between earning money and house building. The money we earn we funnel into building supplies, and also vehicles & equipment.
FINAL CAVEAT
I have experienced all of the above, but yeah, I've only lived here for a few years. I'm not saying anything of the above is universal at all, and I'm sure it isn't the entire picture.
I'm also from the UK, now living in Portugal for the last 5 years - but in the city.
There doesn't seem to be a strong working class culture like what we have in the UK, everyone is (trying to be) painfully middle class. There are thousands of varieties of red wine, but only 2 brands of beer, and they taste the same anyway. Their version of a pub (or dive bar for our US friends) is a brightly lit cafe with plastic furniture, not exactly a place for serious plotting, wild adventures, or an ill-conceived horror story. Hard work is for poor people - in any case 'work' is a social function more than an economic one, wealth is acquired (preferably by birth) not created. Everyone lives with their parents - in their heads if not actually.
Feels like an endless Sunday school here sometimes, I wish they would actually go and do something, even something bad and wrong and horrible (no, corruption does not count, that is just sly and underhand. Neither does faking an injury Ronaldo, we haven't forgotten).
Has Brexit effected your ability to stay in Portugal? I was wondering if all those Brit owned vacation places on the beach were going to come on the market.
But are there employees calling bosses after hours to ask them to do work? What happens if the boss doesn't obey the employee? The employee fires the boss and takes over the company?
> The new rules are also good news for parents of young children. They now have the right to work from home without having to arrange it in advance with their employers, up until their child turns eight years old.
Besides the usual complains about well-intentioned but badly implemented socialist policies and the disregard for 2nd order effects - this seems like a pretty heavy rule to impose?
What is there to implement? If you can work from home, you're permitted to do so. Employers will take some time to get up to grade, but at least now they have notice.
I wonder if this includes sending slack messages or emails outside of work. I’ve personally never been _texted_ outside of work but I’ve received these other forms of communication.
I’m also a US tech worker. Maybe texting outside work is more common in other countries or professions.
Other countries (France, Italy, Slovakia, and now Portugal) outside the US are slowly implementing legislation to prohibit after hours contact to enforce work like balance and boundaries (because you can’t expect employers to do this out of the goodness of their hearts; they will extract as much as they can in jurisdictions without sufficient labor protections, speaking from high level macro observations).
We're a country where the nationals earn like shit - probably one of the worst avg and median incomes in whole EU - and are choked to the brink of passing out by high taxes.
Our political class is exchanging our young and bright over to foreign pensioners, and now apparently, foreign remote workers.
Just so you understand the status quo: people were being pushed out of big cities for years, and now with remote work even more people are being pushed out of medium sized cities in the interior, because everyone wants to live in the country side or by the shore.
We're fucked in every direction by high rents, high real-estate, high taxes, high energy costs, yet our incomes remain shit.
In 20 years you'll probably see the news headline:
"Workers in Portugal now must work until the age of 75 so they could see a healthier work-life balance under new labor laws!"