Every country has certain laws in place to protect its employees. Employers who want to hire workers in Portugal need to understand the legislation that applies so that they can both ensure compliance and guarantee their employees a safe and secure workplace.
Employee protection is a general name given to the laws a country puts in place to prevent employees from coming to harm at work. This can cover a wide range of legislation. In this section, we’ll discuss protections for whistleblowers in Portugal, employee data privacy rights, and the right to equal treatment for temporary agency workers. We’ll also explore Portugal’s pay equity laws and the rules that prevent discrimination and harassment in Portugal.
Whistleblowers play an important role in Portuguese society by calling out wrongful actions or instances of neglect that they witness in the workplace. For this reason, the Portuguese government has put in place certain regulations to facilitate whistleblowing in Portugal and to protect whistleblowers from any form of retaliation as a result of their disclosure.
Portugal’s whistleblowing law is called the Whistleblower Protection Proposal (Proposta de Proteção de Denunciantes). It came into effect in June 2022, implementing the EU Whistleblower Directive. Under this law, companies with 50 or more employees are required to put in place internal reporting channels to make whistleblowing easier.
This is also the case for all companies in certain sensitive sectors, regardless of their headcount. For example, companies offering financial services or financial products, and those that have a legal obligation to prevent money laundering must all comply with Portugal’s whistleblowing law, even if they have fewer than 50 employees. Employers who meet the above criteria but who fail to set up appropriate reporting channels can face fines of up to EUR 125,000.
The law also requires companies to take certain measures after a whistleblower makes a protected disclosure. Specifically, they must provide feedback to the whistleblower within seven days of the disclosure and inform them of the measures they plan to take within three months. Employers have to report any internal reports to a competent external body for investigation, and the whistleblower must be informed of the outcome within 15 days of the investigation’s conclusion.
In Portugal, whistleblowing is when a person reports a breach based on information they have obtained through their job. Portugal’s whistleblowing law applies to all public, private, or social sector workers, including volunteers and interns, whether or not they are paid. The law also protects individuals who assist whistleblowers with their disclosure.
Whistleblowers can report their concerns through their company’s internal reporting channels or file an external report with a competent authority. In certain circumstances, they can also report publicly or to the media.
However, this is only a protected disclosure if the whistleblower believes the breach may constitute an imminent or serious danger to the public interest, that it cannot be effectively disclosed or dealt with by competent authorities, or that there is a risk of retaliation. A whistleblower may also report publicly if they have already filed an internal and an external report and no measures have been taken.
Whistleblowers are protected from any form of retaliation, which includes getting fired or having their duties or place of work changed. If any of the following occur within two years of a whistleblower’s disclosure, it is legally presumed to be a result of the whistleblower’s disclosure unless the employer can prove otherwise:
There are strict rules that govern what employers can and can’t do with their employees’ data in Portugal. As an EU country, Portugal is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Portugal’s own data protection law implementing the GDPR came into effect on 9 August 2019. Portugal’s data protection authority is the National Data Protection Commission (Comissão Nacional de Protecção de Dados).
Under these regulations, employers in Portugal may only process the personal data of their employees if they have a lawful basis for doing so. In some instances, having the employee’s consent may count as a lawful basis, but this isn’t always the case.
To comply with the GDPR and Portugal’s data protection law, employers in Portugal should ensure that personal data is:
The monitoring and surveillance of employees is an important part of employee data protection in Portugal. Here are a few types of employee monitoring that are possible in Portugal, and the restrictions that apply:
Employers in Portugal can choose to hire workers through temporary work agencies when they only need the employee’s services for a limited period. In this situation, the workers are employees of the work agency, and are temporarily leased out to work under the supervision and direction of the client company (the employer).
In Portugal, temporary agency work requires a tripartite relationship between a worker, an employer, and an agency. This relationship is governed by two different agreements:
Temporary work agencies in Portugal must have a public licence and registration, official certification, and pay a security deposit. The activity of the temporary work agency is strictly limited to the recruitment and placement of temporary agency workers with client companies, professional training, and other activities related to human resources.
As an EU country, Portugal is subject to the EU Directive on Temporary Agency Work, which guarantees temporary agency workers the right to equal treatment to direct employees in equivalent roles. Essentially, this means temporary agency workers must be treated the same as if they were recruited directly by the hiring company. This applies to:
Client companies must also give temporary agency workers access to the same collective facilities as their direct employees, including things like canteens, parking, transportation, and break rooms.
All workers and job applicants in Portugal have the right to be treated equally and are protected against discrimination of any kind. This means they should have access to opportunities, training, and promotion, regardless of their background or demographic characteristics. Employers in Portugal must display information regarding workers’ rights to equality and non-discrimination within their workplace.
The Labour Code prohibits both direct and indirect discrimination in Portugal on the basis of any of the following characteristics:
Direct discrimination is when an employer treats one person or group less favourably than others based on one of the characteristics above. Indirect discrimination is when a rule or principle theoretically applies to everyone but is likely to put certain groups at a disadvantage.
The Portuguese Labour Code also prohibits harassment in the workplace, which is defined as behaviour with the intention or effect of destroying the employee’s dignity or creating a work environment that is intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or destabilising. Employers who experience harassment at work in Portugal have the right to compensation.
Under the Labour Code, employees in Portugal have the right to equal pay for the same work or work of equal value, regardless of their sex. This means that it is an offence to pay a woman less than a man working in the same role unless there is a justifiable objective reason for the difference in their pay.
As of 2018, employers in Portugal have certain obligations related to wage transparency, which were put in place with a view to improving pay equity between men and women. The law contains four mechanisms that enforce the principle of equal pay for equal work and work of equal value:
In 2023, the EU approved a directive on pay transparency, which will come into effect in all EU countries including Portugal by June 2026. This will introduce new reporting obligations for employers, as well as giving employees and job seekers more rights to information regarding pay. The aim of the directive is to improve pay transparency and therefore increase pay equity between men and women across the EU.
Understanding what you can and can’t do as an employer is one of the biggest challenges of hiring in Portugal. Get it wrong, and you could face legal action and damage to your reputation.
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