Half of Portuguese remote workers are illegally controlled by their company

Almost half of the employees are subject to it remote work in Portugal49.3%, their company is subject to electronic means of scheduling control that are illegal, such as the use of web cameras or screen recording and monitoring programs.

That’s the result of a report on telecommuting that he commissioned and presented this Tuesday UGT Portugalwhich states that the most common employee monitoring practices are the periodic sending of e-mails or SMS (71%) and software recording the start and end of work activities and breaks (38%). These methods comply with the requirements set by the Portuguese National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD), but almost half of those who work remotely are subject to others who are not.

The company required 21% remote employees for maintenance webcam constantly connected, and 19% have to use them computer screen recording programs. They also use programs for register access to applicationshe history of the internetreal-time location of the terminal, control of time spent on each task and use of peripherals.

The study believes that the “extraordinary increase” in remote work due to the pandemic and the “unpreparedness” of companies, along with the “lack of examples of solutions that can be used”, could explain the responses of the respondents.

Nevertheless, he insists that “greater clarification and monitoring” of working time control procedures is needed to protect workers’ rights.

17% of Portuguese workers worked remotely in the last quarter of 2022, according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).