About half of telecommuters (49.3%) reported that the employer used electronic solutions to monitor telecommuting hours in violation of National Data Protection Commission (CNPD) guidelines, according to the “Study on Telecommuting and Its Challenges in the new context”. commissioned by UGT and coordinated by ISCTE-IUL professor and former Socialist Secretary of State, Paulo Pedroso. The survey that Dinheiro Vivo had access to will be presented this Tuesday at the inter-union headquarters.
“The most common practices, such as sending periodic emails and/or text messages and software for recording the start and end of work activity and breaks (71% and 38% respectively), do not violate which was defined by the CNPD It is “However, there is a significant proportion of respondents who indicate that they have been asked to keep the video camera plugged in permanently and say they have used software to capture images from the work environment”, reveals the same survey.According to the data collected, 21% of remote workers reported that the company required their video camera to be permanently connected and 19% indicated that image capture software exists in the workplace.
“The extraordinary increase in the use of telecommuting, in a context of “pandemic” imposition and the lack of preparation from employers, together with the lack of examples of solutions that can be used, are factors that could explain the level of response of respondents who refer to the use of these devices,” the report clarifies. “Regardless of the explanatory factors, given the non-admissibility of these devices and the increased risks of non-protection of employees’ personal data and violation of their privacy, the need for greater clarification and monitoring of working time monitoring/control procedures is evident. , either in the sense of safeguarding workers’ rights, or in the sense of making it possible to continue to ensure the monitoring and control of working hours,” the study concludes.
The survey’s coordinator, Paulo Pedroso, notes that “Portuguese companies still have an old vision and it’s about management through time control and not based on results,” he told Dinheiro Vivo. “It is impressive that there are still employers who do not care about data protection and use intrusive, unacceptable means to control the telecommuter,” he emphasizes.
The defensive and retrograde position of some companies towards telecommuting becomes even more apparent when it is known that more than half (55.6%) of higher educated professionals who perform intellectual tasks were prevented by employers from working remotely , who asked the employee to stay in the office. The study believes that this position “may be associated with traditional command and control management styles and employer resistance to telework.” In this way, even in the context of the pandemic and the imposition of telework, telework remained among its potential”, the report reinforces. According to INE, the peak in the percentage of Portuguese who telework coincided with periods of confinement due to covid-19: in the second quarter of 2020, 23.1% were remote. Already in the same period of 2022 , after the mandatory regime, the share of the population who teleworked decreased by 3.5 percentage points (pp) to 19.6%, pp to 17%, the study said, showing that 15% of respondents work or have worked remotely worked.
Compensation for additional costs for working remotely takes place by setting a fixed amount in 52% of cases, followed by the submission of supporting documents (31%).
With regard to the reimbursement of additional costs in telework, “the definition of a fixed monthly reimbursement amount was the most commonly used modality (52%), followed by reimbursement of expenses upon presentation of supporting documents (31%),” according to the same report. It should be recalled that the amendments to the Labor Code, approved by parliament and already promulgated by Belém, stipulate that a fixed value must be determined initially, whereby the government must set a cap on the IRS tax exemption, similar to what already happening today with the meal allowance. But the regulation of this value is still in the drawer of the Ministry of Finance.
The study prepared for UGT was conducted between August 23 and September 11, 2022 on 1007 individuals aged between 18 and 66, from north to south of mainland Portugal.
Source: DN
